Arctic ecosystems are experiencing rapid climatic changes, including strong warming and shifts in precipitation patterns. Understanding how Arctic plant species respond to these changes is essential for predicting future biodiversity dynamics and ecosystem functioning.
Recently digitised Greenlandic herbarium collections provide a unique opportunity to study long-term plant responses to climate variation across broad gradients of temperature and precipitation. These historical records allow linking species traits, phenology, and distributions to past and present climate conditions.
Project description
This project investigates how selected key Arctic plant species have responded to climatic gradients across Greenland using digitised herbarium data. By combining specimen information (e.g. collection date, location, phenological stage, or morphological traits) with spatial climate data, the project will assess species-specific responses to temperature and precipitation.
The project is conducted in cooperation with the University of Copenhagen and includes digital data analysis, complemented by hands-on work with herbarium material. The scope and complexity can be adapted to the student’s level: BSc projects may focus on exploratory analyses or a limited number of species, while MSc projects can address hypothesis-driven questions, comparative analyses, or multiple species and traits.
What you will learn
- fundamentals of Arctic plant ecology and climate-change biology
- working with herbarium collections and digitised biodiversity data
- linking biological observations to climate gradients
- data analysis and visualisation in R
- scientific writing and interpretation of long-term ecological data
Key references for further reading
Iwanycki Ahlstrand, N. (2023). Digitization of the Greenland Vascular Plant Herbarium as a Unique Research Infrastructure to Study Arctic Climate Change and Inform Nature Management. Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, 19(3),
310-321, doi.org/10.1177/15501906231159027 (Original work published 2023)
Bjorkman, A.D., Myers-Smith, I.H., Elmendorf, S.C. et al. (2018). Plant functional trait change across a warming tundra biome. Nature 562, 57–62, doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0563-7
Willis, Charles G. et al. (2017). Old Plants, New Tricks: Phenological Research Using
Herbarium Specimens. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 32, Issue 7, 531 – 546, doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2017.03.015
Contact
- Prof. Dr. Sergey Rosbakh | Geobotany | Vegetation ecology, biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics group
