Statistical upscaling of ecosystem CO2 fluxes across the terrestrial tundra and boreal domain: Regional patterns and uncertainties
The regional variability in tundra and boreal carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes can be high, complicating efforts to quantify sink-source patterns across the entire region. Statistical models are increasingly used to predict (i.e., upscale) CO2 fluxes across large spatial domains, but the reliability of different modeling techniques, each with different specifications and assumptions, has not been assessed in detail. Here, we compile eddy covariance and chamber measurements of annual and growing season CO2 fluxes of gross primary productivity (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER), and net ecosystem exchange (NEE) during 1990–2015 from 148 terrestrial high-latitude (i.e., tundra and boreal) sites to a…
Bioclimatic atlas of the terrestrial Arctic
AbstractThe Arctic is the region on Earth that is warming at the fastest rate. In addition to rising means of temperature-related variables, Arctic ecosystems are affected by increasingly frequent extreme weather events causing disturbance to Arctic ecosystems. Here, we introduce a new dataset of bioclimatic indices relevant for investigating the changes of Arctic terrestrial ecosystems. The dataset, called ARCLIM, consists of several climate and event-type indices for the northern high-latitude land areas > 45°N. The indices are calculated from the hourly ERA5-Land reanalysis data for 1950–2021 in a spatial grid of 0.1 degree (~9 km) resolution. The indices are provided in three subsets…
Distance decay 2.0 – a global synthesis of taxonomic and functional turnover in ecological communities
AbstractUnderstanding the variation in community composition and species abundances, i.e., β-diversity, is at the heart of community ecology. A common approach to examine β-diversity is to evaluate directional turnover in community composition by measuring the decay in the similarity among pairs of communities along spatial or environmental distances. We provide the first global synthesis of taxonomic and functional distance decay along spatial and environmental distance by analysing 149 datasets comprising different types of organisms and environments. We modelled an exponential distance decay for each dataset using generalized linear models and extracted r2 and slope to analyse the streng…
Disjunct populations of European vascular plant species keep the same climatic niches
Aim Previous research on how climatic niches vary across species ranges has focused on a limited number of species, mostly invasive, and has not, to date, been very conclusive. Here we assess the d ...
Assessing sampling coverage of species distribution in biodiversity databases
Abstract Aim Biodiversity databases are valuable resources for understanding plant species distributions and dynamics, but they may insufficiently represent the actual geographic distribution and climatic niches of species. Here we propose and test a method to assess sampling coverage of species distribution in biodiversity databases in geographic and climatic space. Location Europe. Methods Using a test selection of 808,794 vegetation plots from the European Vegetation Archive (EVA), we assessed the sampling coverage of 564 European vascular plant species across both their geographic ranges and realized climatic niches. Range maps from the Chorological Database Halle (CDH) were used as bac…
Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales
Patterns and processes shaping ecosystems vary across spatiotemporal scales. As plant functional traits reflect ecosystem properties, investigating their relationships with environment provides an important tool to understand and predict ecosystem structure and functioning. This is particularly important in the tundra where a changing climate may trigger severe alterations in plant communities as both summer and winter conditions are changing. Here, we investigate the relationships between key environmental drivers including summer temperature, snow persistence, topographic position and soil pH, and species height, specific leaf area (SLA) and seed mass as plant traits. The study is carried…
Distance decay 2.0. A global synthesis of taxonomic and functional turnover in ecological communities
Caio Graco-Roza was funded by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), the Carlos Chagas Filho Research Support Foundation (FAPERJ) and the Ella and Georg Erhnrooth Foundation; Jan Altman by research grants INTER-EXCELLENCE LTAUSA19137 provided by Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, 20-05840Y of the Czech Science Foundation, and long-term research development project no. RVO 67985939 of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Otso Ovaskainen was funded by Academy of Finland (grant no. 309581), Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence Funding Scheme (223257), and the European Research Council (ERC) unde…
Local temperatures inferred from plant communities suggest strong spatial buffering of climate warming across Northern Europe
Recent studies from mountainous areas of small spatial extent (2500 km(2) ) suggest that fine-grained thermal variability over tens or hundreds of metres exceeds much of the climate warming expected for the coming decades. Such variability in temperature provides buffering to mitigate climate-change impacts. Is this local spatial buffering restricted to topographically complex terrains? To answer this, we here study fine-grained thermal variability across a 2500-km wide latitudinal gradient in Northern Europe encompassing a large array of topographic complexities. We first combined plant community data, Ellenberg temperature indicator values, locally measured temperatures (LmT) and globally…
Additional file 2 of In-depth characterization of denitrifier communities across different soil ecosystems in the tundra
Additional file 2. Fig. S1. Physicochemical composition of tundra soils in Kilpisjärvi, northern Finland. Fig. S2. The microbial diversity of Kilpisjärvi soils as seen using a gene-centric approach. Fig. S3. Genome-resolved metagenomics of tundra soils. Fig. S4. Overview of the microbial diversity in Kilpisjärvi soils based on a genome-resolved approach. Fig. S5. Metabolic potential for denitrification in Stordalen Mire soils. Fig. S6. Phylogeny of a) nirK, b) nirS, c) norB, and d) nosZ sequences from metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) recovered from tundra soils in Kilpisjärvi, northern Finland.
In-depth characterization of denitrifier communities across different soil ecosystems in the tundra
Abstract Background In contrast to earlier assumptions, there is now mounting evidence for the role of tundra soils as important sources of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O). However, the microorganisms involved in the cycling of N2O in this system remain largely uncharacterized. Since tundra soils are variable sources and sinks of N2O, we aimed at investigating differences in community structure across different soil ecosystems in the tundra. Results We analysed 1.4 Tb of metagenomic data from soils in northern Finland covering a range of ecosystems from dry upland soils to water-logged fens and obtained 796 manually binned and curated metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). We then sear…
Additional file 1 of In-depth characterization of denitrifier communities across different soil ecosystems in the tundra
Additional file 1. Table S1. Physicochemical information, sequencing statistics, and accession numbers for 69 soil metagenomes from Kilpisjärvi, northern Finland. Table S2. Information on 796 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) recovered from tundra soils in Kilpisjärvi, northern Finland.
Water as a multifaceted environmental filter of tundra vegetation
The hydrological cycle of tundra has intensified due to accelerated environmental changes. Climatic changes affect tundra vegetation by altering water conditions (1). Plant-available water mediates climate change impacts, namely against rising temperatures and changing snow dynamics (2). Vegetation is limited by water resources, but water forms also major stress and disturbance. However, climate change impact studies often cover water inadequately in cold regions, which are assumed to be energy-limited ecosystems (3). Thus, we used statistical modelling methods to test if the inclusion of different water factors improved species distribution, species richness, and community composition mode…
The underestimated role of winter microclimate for Arctic tundra vegetation
Assessing the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and developing climate-wise conservation planning requires in-depth understanding of the key drivers of species distributions and assemblages. This is particularly important in Arctic environments which will face the most notable climatic changes worldwide. The search for main determinants of biodiversity patterns in high-latitude ecosystems has focused on growing season conditions, but there is increasing amount of evidence suggesting that wintertime conditions can be equally or even more important factors for Arctic biodiversity than summer conditions (1, 2). Yet, large uncertainties exist regarding the role of winter climate in cont…