Nature

Arctic Plants Keep Pace With Global Warming-Induced Ice Melting

As proved by Svalbard flora

By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

15th of June 2007, 10:08 GMT

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Mountain avens, pictured here in Svalbard, is a Russian immigrant originally, traveling hundreds of miles to colonize the archipelago as the climate warmed in the past.

Svalbard is like a bridge between Norway and the North Pole: an icy Norwegian archipelago famous for glaciers, freezing winds, polar bears, harboring the northernmost human settlements in the world.

10,000 years ago Svalbard was completely covered by ice and now it still covers 60 % of its surface. The rest of the landscape is covered by hardy Arctic plants like mountain avens and white arctic bell heather.

An European team has made a DNA fingerprinting of thousands

of samples of 9 Svalbard plant species, tracking their roots, and revealing the fact that the archipelago had been colonized frequently and repeatedly from all directions as ice melted over the last millennia; thus Arctic plants could keep up with climate changes.

"For all except one species, multiple seeds were necessary to bring the observed genetic diversity to Svalbard. For mountain avens, we estimated the number of seeds that arrived in Svalbard to be 1,560 to 132,000." said biologist Inger Greve Alsos of The University Center in Svalbard.

The surprise was that the most common source of new Svalbard colonizers has been northwestern Russia, a land mass located hundreds of miles away.

"We do not know exactly how these plants are dispersed as this never has been observed directly," said Alsos.

Russia seems to have sent her colonizers to Svalbard through sea ice, helped by the predominant southeasterly winds blowing toward this archipelago.

"We think that the ice may have been important for dispersal of plants, either by transporting them directly or by acting as a bridge on which the wind may blow seeds across."

Svalbard has received also many immigrants from Greenland, Iceland and even Canada, but rarely from Scandinavia, its closest mainland.

"Recurrent glacial cycles have probably selected for a highly mobile arctic flora. In addition, some dispersal vectors may be particularly efficient in the Arctic as a result of the open landscape." noted the team.

Thus, Arctic plants have a chance when faced with climate change due to global warming. The mountain avens and the highland saxifrage will keep the pace with the retreat of the island's glaciers, but they could lose their habitat if the Arctic ice melts entirely and too quickly.

Svalbard will probably get a mainly shrub vegetation.

The bell heather, pictured here, can move fast and far when required, having traveled from Greenland to Svalbard. The northward creep of such species is a leading indicator of Arctic warming.

"Colonization by shrubs, for example willows, would have a cascade effect on the ecosystems in Svalbard as there are only very fragmented populations of shrubs [there] today. But this mobility of Arctic plants has limited applicability to greenery that thrives in lower latitudes," said Alsos.

Svalbard could be the last refuge for many Arctic plant species. But flora displacements in temperate and tropical areas could be trickier due to man-made and natural barriers like cities and mountains.

TAGS:

ice | plant | dna | arctic

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