I recently read a paper published in my birth year (1999) and found it interesting and meaningful, so I thought I would share it with you. The journal “Responses of Tundra Plants to Experimental Warming: Meta-Analysis of the International Tundra Experiment” talked about how tundra plants responded to warming temperature. In this study, scientists controlled and increased the temperature of the experimental environment to observe the extent to which the growth and reproduction of different plant species in different regions of the tundra are affected by increased temperature, as this experimental model is likely to reflect the real growth state of tundra plants in the face of future weather changes. The experiments showed that in warmer, lower latitudes, plant growth was substantially increased by temperature changes, leaf bud burst and flowering were found to be earlier than usual, and the asexual growth rate of plants was substantially increased. In contrast, in the Arctic, where latitudes are higher and ambient temperatures are lower, the reproductive rates of tundra plants are substantially higher. Scientists speculate that this may be due to the fact that in warmer places, tundra plants have a greater survival rate but are highly competitive, and they need to compete for resources such as sunlight and oxygen to ensure their survival. In contrast, tundra plants at high latitudes are sparsely distributed, so they choose to invest in seeds to ensure the continuation of the species in that geographic area.
I think this journal is closely related to applied plant ecology because it explores the changes in tundra plants themselves in the face of climate change and the possible effects it will have on the ecosystem as a whole. Tundra soils store large amounts of carbon, and increasing temperatures have caused tundra plants in different parts of the tundra to exhibit varying degrees of reduced carbon storage capacity due to increased photosynthesis. Thus, global warming was predicted at that time to cause tundra plants to amplify CO2 release, and indications now suggest that this prediction has been confirmed.
Reference:
Arft, Walker, M. D., Gurevitch, J., Alatalo, J. M., Bret-Harte, M. S., Dale, M., Diemer, M., Gugerli, F., Henry, G. H. R., Jones, M. H., Hollister, R. D., Jónsdóttir, I. S., Laine, K., Lévesque, E., Marion, G. M., Molau, U., Mølgaard, P., Nordenhäll, U., Raszhivin, V., … Wookey, P. A. (1999). Responses of Tundra Plants to Experimental Warming: Meta-Analysis of the International Tundra Experiment. Ecological Monographs, 69(4), 491–511. https://doi.org/10.1890/0012-9615(1999)069[0491:ROTPTE]2.0.CO;2
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 