What will happen in the Arctic as climate change continues? Scientists have decided to see what happens when they freeze plants, hoping to be able to predict the fate of these plants in the future.
Climate change will bring warmer temperatures to the Arctic. This means that Svalbard and other locations will experience more rain during the winter. But what will happen to tundra plants and arctic heather when these changes occur? Scientists took a closer look to see exactly what may take place.
"We already see large changes in Svalbard's climate, and we expect more to come," said Brage B. Hansen, one of the paper's authors. "We know when we have summer warming, plants will grow more, but when we have winter warming, which is even more profound in a place like Svalbard, we don't really know how this affects plants."
In this case, the researchers decided to see how the tundra plant Cassiope tetragona would do while encased in ice. The researchers used wooden boxes to isolate areas of the plant so that they could create a thick cover of ice inside the box. Then, the researchers encased the plants in ice by using 40 liters of water.
After encasing the plants in water, the researchers left them until the summer. When they came back, they found that the plants that had been encased in ice were more likely to be damaged.
With that said, there were some positive outcomes from the icing. Surprisingly, the plants that had been encased by ice actually had more growth in their remaining undamaged shoots in comparison to the plants in the control plots.
So how did this happen? It's possible that the plants were compensating for the damage that they experienced. If they had fewer shoots and didn't put energy into making flowers, it's possible that energy was then channeled into the surviving parts of the plant.
The findings reveal that when it comes to these plants, freezing may delay reproduction but may also cause more growth. This could be detrimental in the long term for the plants, but the scientists plan to conduct further studies to see how it will impact the plants over time.
The findings were published in the March issue of the journal Ecology and Evolution.
