Published July 23, 2020 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Data from: Climate synchronises shrub growth across a high-arctic archipelago: contrasting implications of summer and winter warming

  • 1. Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  • 2. Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Description

Climate change is most pronounced at high latitudes, where plant and animal populations are often strongly influenced by environmental fluctuations related to climate and weather. Environmental conditions can co-fluctuate over large distances and thereby synchronise primary production in space. However, large-scale studies of such spatiotemporal patterns remain rare in the Arctic, where short time-series and poor spatial replication have characterised the data available on both biotic and abiotic parameters. Here, we use dendrochronological tools to measure ring growth of a dominant dwarf shrub, the polar willow (Salix polaris Wahlenb.), previously found to reliably trace community-level vascular plant biomass production. We investigated climate drivers of vegetation growth and their role in the synchronisation of primary production across the rapidly warming archipelago of Svalbard (n = 8 sites, composed of 17 sub-sites, 0.06-293 km apart). We found contrasting effects of summer versus winter weather on ring growth and its spatial synchrony. Although an overall positive effect of summer temperature caused spatially synchronous growth, negative impacts of winter rain-on-snow events occurred only locally, potentially counteracting such synchrony. However, the anticipated increase in both summer temperature and spatial extent of rain-on-snow events, causing basal ice encapsulation of the vegetation, could change the relative importance of seasons for spatiotemporal dynamics of shrub growth. Because these shrub ring growth chronologies reflect annual fluctuations in total vascular plant biomass, fuelling the bottom-up controlled food-web, these results have large implications for our understanding of how climate change shapes tundra ecosystem productivity in time and space.

Notes

Please read the ReadMe file before to download the data. 

A R script is available on request: mathilde.lemoullec@ntnu.no. 

File description for manuscript Le Moullec et al. 2020 Oikos: doi: 10.1111/oik.07059

# 1. Files to build chronologies .rwl

- rwl_petuniabukta.rwl   # rwl file from Salix polaris chronologies (at the plant level) published in Buchwal et al. 2013. Polar Biol.
- rwl_Semmeldalen.rwl  # rwl file from Salix polaris chronologies (at the cross-section level) published in Le Moullec et al. 2019 JEcol
- rwl_svalbard_new.rwl  # rwl from 6 new sites, 30 Salix polaris individual chronologies (at the cross-section level) 
- plant_info.txt               # Cross section's radius and ring to pith information of file "rwl_svalbard_new.rwl", for possible standardization e.g. BAI, RCS

# 2. Ring-growth information at the plant level formatted for linear mixed-effect models or synchrony analysis. 
- Salix_ind_BAIrcs_RAWpetunia_MeanCenter # Individual shrubs' RWI (standardized = BAI + RCS + Mean Centered).                                                                                                                                                                    # NOTE that ring growth from Petuniabukta are ONLY Mean Centered

- Salix_ind_RAW # Individual shrubs' raw ring width (micrometers)

# 3. Climate data 
- climat_raw_Oikos         # Raw climate data for each station used across Svalbard, provided by eKlima.no (except Hornsund).                                                                                                                        # Hornsund: data provided by the Institute of Geophysics Polish Academy of Sciences and meteorological staff of the Polish Polar Station Hornsund 
- climat_estimated_Oikos # Each climate variable is an estimate at the Svalbard scale: from a linear mixed-effect models with (1|Station) as random effect
- climat_estimated.se_Oikos # Standard error of the climate estimates "climat_estimated_Oikos"

# 4. GPS coordinates for distance matrix
- site_GPS     # Each Salix polaris' subsite UTM coordinates

Funding provided by: Norges Forskningsråd
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100005416
Award Number: 276080

Funding provided by: Norges Forskningsråd
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100005416
Award Number: 223257

Funding provided by: Norges Forskningsråd
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100005416
Award Number: 244647

Funding provided by: Norges Forskningsråd
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100005416
Award Number: 246054

Funding provided by: Svalbard miljøversfond*
Crossref Funder Registry ID:
Award Number: 16/113

Funding provided by: Svalbard miljøversfond
Crossref Funder Registry ID:
Award Number: 16/113

Files

climat_estimated.se_Oikos.txt

Files (425.3 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:7a50be62652495e905ebfbb8ecad7130
19.8 kB Preview Download
md5:7436119af405e3a027459cfcae63d811
21.5 kB Preview Download
md5:d07ab8753a86ecfe8dbbc8f8bc4bf627
16.6 kB Preview Download
md5:c5c2cc4ae5fe9628a42aca8df86e6225
5.6 kB Preview Download
md5:975a91269e55bcf29083dd45d77fa951
1.9 kB Preview Download
md5:871ca4b546316bb26ba00640e1b344a6
3.8 kB Download
md5:67473be395e12c4934a554915652a92f
26.5 kB Download
md5:d3c5799701821f24a3aeae9d78a047d2
44.1 kB Download
md5:b940753c04b49e585445d76d3a5db9d9
149.2 kB Preview Download
md5:689c0d6ec6f9702698462bd7d028e9f0
136.0 kB Preview Download
md5:1abefbc6bee90aaeaa3caea805163fb3
332 Bytes Preview Download

Additional details

Related works