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Trade-offs Between Wood and Leaf Production in Arctic Shrubs Along a Temperature and Moisture Gradient in West Greenland

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Abstract

Warming environmental conditions are often credited with increasing Arctic shrub growth and altering abundance and distribution, yet it is unclear whether tundra shrub expansion will continue into future decades. Water availability may begin to limit Arctic shrub growth if increasing air temperatures create drier soil conditions due to increased evapotranspiration and permafrost-thaw-induced soil drainage. However, few studies have effectively considered how dominant tundra shrub species respond to variations in both temperature and moisture. To better understand the key effects of temperature variation and soil moisture on two dominant circumpolar deciduous shrubs, we studied shrub growth along a natural landscape gradient in West Greenland, which is a region observed to be drying due to ongoing warming. We found that the growth forms of both grey willow (Salix glauca) and dwarf birch (Betula nana) were sensitive to warmer and drier conditions. For both species, increases in air temperature positively correlated with greater shrub volume, with the doubling of canopy volume due to increased woody biomass. Leaf biomass was best predicted by edaphic features including extractable ammonium, which was positively related to soil moisture, and bulk density. Warmer soils tended to be drier, suggesting that ongoing warming in the area could lead to significant water limitation. Our findings suggest that drier soil conditions might be limiting foliar production despite warming temperatures for two circumpolar dominant shrubs, Betula nana and Salix glauca, which could have wide-ranging, biome-level consequences about ongoing and predicted shrub growth and expansion.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Melissa DeSiervo, Francesca Governali, Alexandra Stendhal, Edward Darling, and Paul Zietz for their assistance with field and laboratory work. We also thank Kathy Cottingham, Eric Post, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (Award No. 1506155) to R. Virginia and a 2017 American Alpine Club Research Grant awarded to R. Finger Higgens.

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  1. Ecology, Evolution, Environment and Society Graduate Program, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    Rebecca Finger Higgens, Caitlin Hicks Pries & Ross A. Virginia

  2. Department of Biological Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    Caitlin Hicks Pries

  3. Environmental Studies Program, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    Ross A. Virginia

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  1. Rebecca Finger Higgens
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  2. Caitlin Hicks Pries
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Correspondence to Rebecca Finger Higgens.

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Author contributions: RFH conceived of and designed study, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper; CHP helped with data analysis and writing the paper; RAV helped with research and writing the paper. Data from this study are archived with the Arctic Data Center. https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/urn:uuid:3c55fe83-77a8-4631-8f03-62f49eced59d.

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Higgens, R.F., Pries, C.H. & Virginia, R.A. Trade-offs Between Wood and Leaf Production in Arctic Shrubs Along a Temperature and Moisture Gradient in West Greenland. Ecosystems 24, 652–666 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-020-00541-4

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