The shrubification of the Swedish tundra – multidisciplinary monitoring for a consensus perspective

The tundra shrub expansion provide some of the most striking examples of ecological change in the circumpolar region over the recent decades, with profound effect on the structure-function of the ecosystem and on the people depending on its services.

Quantifying the global change responses of shrub communities remain, nevertheless, a significant challenge because high-resolution data are limited in space and time.

This project brings together multidisciplinary research groups with combined research excellence in dendrochronological, remote sensing and ecophysiological measurements, hitherto little investigated in tandem in the context of a changing Arctic.

We will establish a unique ground-based monitoring program of shrub growth at focal research sites in subarctic Sweden, providing first-order insight into the ecophysiological mechanisms operating at hourly-daily timescales.

We will combine the fine-scale plot-based data with retrospective multi-decadal analysis of inter-annual shrub growth and xylem structure on an intra-annual scale, based on dendrochronology and quantitative wood anatomy, and use the multiple line of evidence to evaluate the ability of remote sensing to capture in situ ecological change.

We consider this novel framework highly promising and we expect the combination of enhanced ecological monitoring and data synthesis across a variety of spatiotemporal scales to pave the way to improved projections of vegetation feedbacks to future climate change.