Half time seminar: “Landscape heterogeneity, microclimate, and plant responses to climate change in Arctic and alpine tundra”

Focus for Kai’s PhD project is how local microclimates created by heterogeneous Arctic landscapes may shape how Arctic and alpine plants respond to climate warming, for example if  warmer microsites already harbor plant populations better adapted to future conditions? See more below. 

Opponent at the seminar is Anthony Verboom, and examiner Mats Olsson, both from Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences. Kai’s main supervisor is Anne D. Bjorkman (BioEnv) with Johan Uddling Fredin (BioEnv) as co-supervisors.

Short summary:

Arctic and alpine ecosystems are warming rapidly, but plants do not experience climate change uniformly across the landscape. Fine-scale variation in topography, moisture, snow dynamics, and temperature can create strong local differences in microclimate, potentially influencing both the persistence of cold-adapted species and the capacity of plant populations to respond to warming. In this half-time seminar, I will focus on two main parts of my PhD project. First, I will present results from multiyear microclimate and vegetation data from alpine tundra in northern Sweden, examining how local thermal and hydrological conditions may create microrefugia for climate-sensitive vegetation. Second, I will present preliminary results from my reciprocal transplant experiment, which asks, among other things, whether warmer microhabitats within Arctic landscapes harbor warm-adapted subpopulations of tundra plants. This part of the project explores how landscape heterogeneity may contribute to genetic variation and local adaptation, and how this may in turn support the persistence of Arctic vegetation under climate change. Together, these studies highlight that plant responses to climate change depend not only on regional warming trends, but also on fine-scale landscape variation that shapes both local buffering and adaptive potential