24.09.2018Alpine and Arctic tundra are warming 2-3 times faster than average

The Alpine and Arctic tundra are warming 2-3 times faster than the Earth surface on average. How does vegetation react to this warming? What do plant traits tell us about changes in plant strategies? And what are consequences of these changes to other components of the Earth system? 

130 researchers pulled together data measured during thousands of hours of field work at Alpine and Arctic sites to investigate vascular plant changes across the tundra biome.

Gabriela Schaepman-Strub was part of the sTundra team that conceived the study published in Nature today. Her former PhD student, Maitane Iturrate-Garcia, spent two summers to collect the valuable data in the remote Siberian tundra.

Bjorkman, A. et al. (2018): Plant functional trait change across a warming tundra biome. Nature,  doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0563-7

Read more in the press release here