See also:

Soil Temperatures at Old Crow
 
Remote sensing of plant biomass

Arctic Borderlands Ecological Knowledge Co-op

What is happening?

• These graphs show the relative amount of ground cover of different plants that are present in the three plant communities that are being monitored near Old Crow as part of the Co-op's Old Crow plant project.
• The most common plant types are lichens (not really plants) and mosses, followed by flowering plants such as labrador tea and cranberry.
• The plots where these measurements were taken (1997) will be re-visited periodically to see how the plant communities may be changing.

Why is it important?

• Plant communities respond to long-term changes in the environment through changes in how well and how much different species grow. Because some species may show a greater or different response than others, changes in the environment are likely to cause changes in what plants are growing in a given plant community.
• Changes in the type and amount of different plants growing in a location may affect many aspects of the ecology of that location, including effects on animal populations that depend on certain plant types for food. For example, caribou in their wintering grounds could be negatively affected if there were decreases in lichens, which are important to them as winter forage.
• Plant community composition is being monitored along with soil temperatures in Old Crow to see how plant communities may be changing in response to changes in climate.

Technical Notes

• This information was collected in Old Crow in 1997 as part of a long-term monitoring study of vegetation and soil temperatures at Old Crow
• The common names listed for vascular plant species refer to the following species:
  • labrador tea = Ledum decumbens
  • cranberry = Vaccinium vitis-idaea
  • blueberry = Vaccinium uliginosum
  • dwarf birch = Betula glandulosa
  • cloudberry = Rubus chamaemorus
  • crowberry = Empetrum nigrum
  • willow = Salix sp.
  • wintergreen = Pyrola secunda
  • leatherleaf = Chamaedaphne calyculata
  • coltsfoot = Petasites frigida
  • rose = Rosa acicularis
  • sedge = Carex sp.