ID 214 : Retrospective and Prospective Vegetation Change in the Polar Regions: Back to the Future

Leader:
Terry Callaghan - Abisko Scientific Research Station, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences - Sweden

Summary:
The polar environments are rapidly changing and leaving a lasting impact on the freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems within them. However the region is so vast and diverse that the knowledge of what drives these changes is limited. This project will assess how terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and environments have changed in the past and record their current status and biodiversity.

Period:

List of Belgian Partners involved
Rik Van Bogaert, Ghent University (PhD-student of Flanders Research Foundation: FWO)

Description of the Belgian Contribution :
Objectives
Via the use of historical sources, such as old photographs, aerial images, and former measurements, the current state of the environment can be placed in perspective. All three sources are applicable for the Torneträsk landscape area in northernmost Sweden. Besides dendrochronological sampling, these additional data will form major evidence for treeline dynamics within the last century. In example, treeline measurements of Thore Fries from the years 1905-1912 (Fries, 1913) will be replicated, just like those of Jan Hoogesteger dating from 1977 (Sonesson & Hoogesteger, 1983). Jan Hoogesteger himself will guide the measurement replications.

Expected results
It is not unlikely that a high-resolution treeline map of the early twentieth century could be produced in addition to one of the present time covering a landscape area. This would be a unique project. At least, an overview of recent processes and shifts of the treeline zone will be clarified for a landscape area in northernmost Fennoscandia. This is urgently needed in order to attain ground truth data of the intermediate scale, whereas nowadays measurements of the plot-scale are directly extrapolated to the regional or even global scale.

Added value within the core project
Back To the Future is a project that builds on the International Biological Programme's Tundra Biome participants and site infrastructure which still exist after 30 years. The Belgian contribution forms the link between the polar and the subpolar area –both of primordial importance in the Earth’s climate system– by including the transition zone between tundra and taiga, i.e. the treeline.

References
- Fries, Th. C. E. 1913. Botanische Untersuchungen im nördlichsten Schweden. Academic Dissertation. Stockholm, p. 361
- Sonesson, M., J. Hoogesteger. 1983. Recent tree-line dynamics (Betula pubescens Ehrh. ssp. tortuosa (Ledeb.) Nyman) in northern Sweden. Nordicana 47, 47-54

Related Campaigns:
This study is linked with the project TARANTELLA (ID 59): “Terrestrial ecosystems in ARctic and ANTarctic: Effects of UV Light, Liquefying ice, and Ascending temperatures”, in which Louis Beyens and Bart Van de Vijver of Antwerp university are involved.
The project is closely related to the IPY-projects PPS Arctic (ID 151) & ENVISNAR (ID 213) in which the same author is involved.

Links:
- www.geoweb.ugent.be/research/phys.asp
- myweb.dal.ca/br238551/pps.html