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As a result of climate change, the Rocky Mountain Front Range is experiencing warmer summers and earlier snowmelt. Due to the importance of snow for regulating soil temperature, growing season length, and available moisture in alpine ecosystems, even small shifts in the snow-free period could have large impacts. The focus of the Growing Season Length Experiment is to examine how terrain-related differences in climate exposure influence the way alpine habitats respond to climate change via earlier snowmelt. To simulate how changes in growing season length may affect biotic and abiotic components, NWT LTER researchers established 5 experimental sites each containing a pair 10 x 40m rectangular plots. These blocks include north and south facing aspects, subalpine and alpine tundra meadows in a range of hydrological conditions (e.g. dry meadows, moist meadows, wet meadows). We accelerated snowmelt in one plot of each block by adding chemically inert black sand, while keeping the second plot as an unmanipulated control (black sand was added to these plots after snow had naturally melted). This dataset includes measurements of soil temperature, moisture, and electrical conductivity.
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Topographic Heterogeneity and Aspect Moderate Exposure to Climate Change Across an Alpine Tundra Hillslope
Abstract Alpine tundra ecosystems are highly vulnerable to climate warming but are governed by local‐scale abiotic heterogeneity, which makes it difficult to predict tundra responses to environmental change. Although land models are typically implemented at global scales, they can be applied at local scales to address process‐based ecological questions. In this study, we ran ecosystem‐scale Community Land Model (CLM) simulations with a novel hillslope hydrology configuration to represent topographically heterogeneous alpine tundra vegetation across a moisture gradient at Niwot Ridge, Colorado, USA. We used local observations to evaluate our simulations and investigated the role of topography and aspect in mediating patterns of snow, productivity, soil moisture, and soil temperature, as well as the potential exposure to climate change across an alpine tundra hillslope. Overall, our simulations captured observed gradients in abiotic conditions and productivity among heterogeneous, hydrologically connected vegetation communities (moist, wet, and dry). We found that south facing aspects were characterized by reduced snowpack and drier and warmer soils in all communities. When we extended our simulations to the year 2100, we found that earlier snowmelt altered the timing of runoff, with cascading effects on soil moisture, productivity, and growing season length. However, these effects were not distributed equally across the tundra, highlighting potential vulnerabilities of alpine vegetation in dry, wind‐scoured, and south facing areas. Overall, our results demonstrate how land model outputs can be applied to advance process‐based understanding of climate change impacts on ecosystem function.
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- PAR ID:
- 10474064
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Geophysical Union
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
- Volume:
- 128
- Issue:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2169-8953
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JG007664
