Lost at high latitudes: Arctic and endemic plants under threat as climate warms

Niskanen, Annina; Niittynen, Pekka; Aalto, Juha; Väre, Henry; Luoto, Miska

doi:10.1111/ddi.12889

Cited by 49 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 86 publications

(111 reference statements)

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“…The arctic-alpine flora has been identified as one that is exceptionally threatened by projected future climate change 3 ; it is also one that is often difficult to track via traditional palaeorecords. The Lake Bolshoye Shchuchye record provides unusually robust empirical evidence of the persistence of an arctic-alpine flora through a long period of environmental change, demonstrating the buffering capacity of a spatially heterogeneous landscape.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Arctic-alpine plants are considered to be at greater risk of habitat loss and local extinction under future climate change than plants of lower elevations 1–3 . Yet model simulations and predictions at larger scales often fail to account for the importance of local-scale factors that control plant distributions 4,5 , and it may be that extinction probabilities have been overestimated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the same time, compressed vertical and horizontal gradients enable species to track their bioclimatic niches effectively as climate changes 13,14 . Most evidence that mountain regions function as long-term refugia or safe sites is, however, indirect, being based on contemporary observation and/or modelling 3,5,15 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Persistence of arctic-alpine flora during 24,000 years of environmental change in the Polar Urals

Clarke

Edwards

Gielly

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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Plants adapted to extreme conditions can be at high risk from climate change; arctic-alpine plants, in particular, could “run out of space” as they are out-competed by expansion of woody vegetation. Mountain regions could potentially provide safe sites for arctic-alpine plants in a warmer climate, but empirical evidence is fragmentary. Here we present a 24,000-year record of species persistence based on sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) from Lake Bolshoye Shchuchye (Polar Urals). We provide robust evidence of long-term persistence of arctic-alpine plants through large-magnitude climate changes but document a decline in their diversity during a past expansion of woody vegetation. Nevertheless, most of the plants that were present during the last glacial interval, including all of the arctic-alpines, are still found in the region today. This underlines the conservation significance of mountain landscapes via their provision of a range of habitats that confer resilience to climate change, particularly for arctic-alpine taxa.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Persistence of arctic-alpine flora during 24,000 years of environmental change in the Polar Urals

Clarke

Edwards

Gielly

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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“…These isolated and climatically extreme environmental, notably the terrestrial ecosystems of the Southern Ocean, have long been regarded as sentinels of emerging climate change impacts (Bergstrom & Chown, 1999). With the polar regions having already experienced rapid warming (Clem et al, 2020;Turner et al, 2014), the impacts to biodiversity are now clearly evident (Bergstrom et al, 2015;Descamps et al, 2017;McClelland et al, 2018) and are predicted to increase in severity under future climate change scenarios (Duffy et al, 2017;Niskanen, Niittynen, Aalto, Väre, & Luoto, 2019;Wauchope et al, 2017). Temperature is the dominant factor shaping the distribution of species in these climatically extreme regions, and the effects are realised at the scales of both macroclimate and microclimate (Hilde et al, 2016;Kankaanpää, Abrego, Vesterinen, & Roslin, 2020;Niittynen et al, 2020;Nyakatya & McGeoch, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microclimates can be accurately predicted across ecologically important remote ecosystems

Baker

Dickson

Bergstrom

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Microclimate information is often crucial for understanding ecological patterns and processes, including under climate change, but is typically absent from ecological and biogeographic studies owing to difficulties in obtaining microclimate data. Recent advances in microclimate modelling, however, suggest that microclimate conditions can now be predicted anywhere at any time using hybrid physically- and empirically-based models. Here, for the first time, we test the utility of this approach across a remote, inaccessible, and climate change threatened polar island ecosystem at ecologically relevant scales. Microclimate predictions were generated at a 100 × 100 m grain (at a height of 4 cm) across the island, with models parameterised using either meteorological observations from the island’s weather station (AWS) or climate reanalysis data (CRA). AWS models had low error rates and were highly correlated with observed seasonal and daily temperatures (root mean squared error of predicted seasonal average Tmean ≤ 0.6 °C; Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) for the daily Tmean ≥ 0.86). By comparison, CRA models had a slight warm bias in all seasons and a smaller diurnal range in the late summer period than in situ observations. Despite these differences, the modelled relationship between the percentage cover of the threatened endemic cushion plant Azorella macquariensis and microclimate varied little with the source of microclimate data (r = 0.97), suggesting that both model parameterisations capture similar patterns of spatial variation in microclimate conditions across the island ecosystem. Here, we have shown that the accurate prediction of microclimate conditions at ecologically relevant spatial and temporal scales is now possible using hybrid physically- and empirically-based models across even the most remote and climatically extreme environments. These advances will help add the microclimate dimension to ecological and biogeographic studies, which could be critical for delivering climate change-resilient conservation planning in climate-change exposed ecosystems.

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“…Arctic and alpine ecosystems are considered to be one of the most vulnerable and susceptible systems to many of the effects of climate change-e.g., increases in temperature, altered precipitation patterns, and changes of seasonal dynamics [27]. There is also an ongoing debate about species range shifts towards higher altitudes and latitudes [28][29][30], with the strongest shifts in species composition in the vegetation of the Tatra Mountains being found in mylonite grasslands of a small plot size [31]. Another striking effect of climate change in mountain ecosystems is the thermophilization of vegetation, where the composition of species accompanying the cold-adapted taxa changed significantly and the cold-adapted plants are recently co-occurring with species preferring warmer conditions than in the past [31,32].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fate of Endangered Rock Sedge (Carex rupestris) in the Western Carpathians—The Future Perspective of an Arctic-Alpine Species under Climate Change

et al. 2019

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Carex rupestris is an endangered and rare arctic-alpine element of the Western Carpathian flora. Given the geographically isolated and spatially restricted peripheral ranges of arctic-alpine species, there is a good chance that many species of conservation concern irreversibly disappear from the regional flora under the ongoing climate change. In this study, we gathered all existing data on the presence of C. rupestris and focused on its current and future distribution in the Western Carpathians. We found that although the distribution of the species is fragmented and scarce, C. rupestris occurs in several mountain ranges, in four distinct plant community types, which differ considerably in altitude, geological bedrock, and other habitat characteristics. In contrast to the relatively broad range of occupied habitats, C. rupestris shows a narrow temperature niche (mean annual temperature range 0.4–4.0 °C). Ensembles of small models based on climatic characteristics and local topography show that regardless of the climate change scenario (rcp2.6, rcp8.5), many current occurrence sites, mainly in the peripheral zones of the range, will face the excessive loss of suitable environmental conditions. It is expected that the Tatra Mountains will be the only mountain range retaining potentially suitable habitats and providing possible refugia for this cold-adapted species in the future. Such severe shrinkage of distribution ranges and associated geographic isolation raises serious concerns for the fate of the arctic-alpine species in the Western Carpathians.

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Lost at high latitudes: Arctic and endemic plants under threat as climate warms

Cited by 49 publications

References 86 publications

Persistence of arctic-alpine flora during 24,000 years of environmental change in the Polar Urals

Persistence of arctic-alpine flora during 24,000 years of environmental change in the Polar Urals

Microclimates can be accurately predicted across ecologically important remote ecosystems

The Fate of Endangered Rock Sedge (Carex rupestris) in the Western Carpathians—The Future Perspective of an Arctic-Alpine Species under Climate Change

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