Isla and other ShrubHub members are mentioned in a recent article in the journal BioScience: Plants Duke It Out in a Warming Arctic by Lesley Evans Ogden.

From the article: “Researchers are collaborating to document and predict Arctic vegetation shifts, particularly the phenomenon of shrub encroachment, or shrubification. What do we know about vegetation change in a warming Arctic? Are shrubs taking over, and where are the knowledge gaps?… Myers-Smith uses repeat photography, vegetation monitoring, and tree ring assessment, noting a dramatic shift… In 2014, she was surprised to measure an individual with a height of 1 meter, a giant twice as tall as most others. “We named him Gunther, the tallest shrub on Herschel Island,” she says. Gunther grew 20 centimeters in one summer.”

Günther the 110-cm-tall shrub on Herschel Island

In this paper lead by Sarah Elmendorf, we compared three methods of estimating warming effects on plant community composition: 1) manipulative warming experiments, 2) repeat sampling under ambient temperature change (monitoring), and 3) space-for-time substitution.

The three approaches showed agreement in the increase in the relative abundance of species with a warmer thermal niche, but differed in the magnitude of change estimated. Experimental and monitoring approaches were similar in magnitude, whereas space-for-time comparisons indicated a much stronger response.

These results suggest that all three approaches are valid, but experimental warming and long-term monitoring are best suited for forecasting impacts over the coming decades.

Check out the paper here:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/12/25/1410088112.abstract

Here is team shrub at our holiday lab meeting looking festive after hot apple cider, mince pies, cranberry scones and Christmas tree-shaped bread!  Delicious!

From left to right: Isla, Joe, Jenny, Sandra, Haydn, Santeri and Meagan joining us on Skype (Anne is absent from the photo because she was at the ArcticNet meeting in Ottawa, Canada)

And here is our requisite jumping photo!

The Polar Sea episode “Melting Land” featuring Isla and Louise and other members of the Herschel Island 2013 field crew is aired in Canada, Germany and France.  Check out the website for more information:
http://www.polarsea360.com/episodes/08/

The paper “Methods for measuring arctic and alpine shrub growth: A review” was published online this November.  If you ever wanted to know how to use shrubrings to explore the growth of shrubs in tundra ecosystems then this is the paper for you!

Here is a photo of the 2014 Herschel Island Field Crew holding the flags of all our represented nationalities!

Check out the field research blog from last summer at the following link:

http://page21.org/blogs/106-herschel2014

22 July 2014 – Clara and I spent the last two weeks working away in the common garden experiment in Kluane Lake in the Southwest Yukon.  Now we are up in Inuvik and about to head of to Herschel Island for the second part of our field expedition.

July 2014 – Team shrub including Clara Flintrop, Meagan Grabowski, Meagan’s field assistant Rebecca and me hike into Pika Camp in the mountains of the Southern Yukon to collect willow cuttings for the common garden experiment and to measure plant traits on tundra species.