skip to main content


Title: Photograph-based seed cone counts of white spruce (Picea glauca) trees from treeline field sites across the Brooks Range, Alaska 2019-2022
Photograph-derived counts of seed cones on white spruce (Picea glauca) trees at elevational (alpine) & lower (arctic) treelines at 19 research sites along a west-east gradient in Alaska's Brooks Range. Photographs are from a single angle and thus represent a "cone production index" rather than a complete count of all the cones on a tree. The general purpose of the sampling was to examine west-east variation in white spruce growth and reproduction responses to changes in climatic gradients and ongoing climate change.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1748773
NSF-PAR ID:
10475448
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
NSF Arctic Data Center
Date Published:
Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
["Picea glauca","white spruce","Brooks Range","treeline","cone production","reproduction","seed cones","Arctic treeline"]
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Photograph-derived counts of seed cones on white spruce (Picea glauca) trees at elevational (alpine) & lower (arctic) treelines at 19 research sites along a west-east gradient in Alaska's Brooks Range. Photographs are from a single angle and thus represent a "cone production index" rather than a complete count of all the cones on a tree. The general purpose of the sampling was to examine west-east variation in white spruce growth responses to changes in climate. 
    more » « less
  2. Tree-ring widths from 1576 white spruce trees growing at 78 treelines distributed across 19 research sites along a longitudinal gradient in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska. The general purpose of the sampling was to examine west-east variation in white spruce growth responses to changes in climate. Trees were sampled at both high ("alpine") and low elevation treelines ("arctic"). Increment cores were collected in August and September of 2022 as low as possible on each tree (~25 centimeter height). Trees indicated with an "f" were treated with NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) fertilizer in June of 2019 and June of 2021. 
    more » « less
  3. We destructively sampled up to 15 white spruce (Picea glauca) seedlings (<140 centimeters tall) from 2 study treelines (1 upper elevation, Alpine, and 1 lower elevation, Arctic) at 16 sites across Alaska's Brooks Range in August-September 2021. We harvested 3 seedlings each in 5 height classes (0-10, 10-30, 30-60, 60-100, 100-140cm). Height (cm) was measured in the field before harvest as vertical distance from ground to tallest living tissue. The target of harvest was the root-shoot boundary, where above ground stem interfaces with roots. The earliest years of a seedling should be located in the wood of this section. For very small seedlings we harvested whole seedlings. In the laboratory we cut ~1cm thick "cookies" of the harvest root-shoot section, progressively sanded until cells were visible under the microscope and then counted rings back to the pith. For small seedlings, we counted bud scars along the stem. We used the earliest date obtained from these counts as the germination date (the innermost year, or In.year in the data csv). The general purpose of the sampling was to examine west-east variation in white spruce growth and reproduction responses to changes in climatic gradients and ongoing climate change. 
    more » « less
  4. Populations of many tree species exhibit synchronous and highly temporally variable seed crops across years. This is called mast seeding, and there are two predominant hypotheses for this pattern of reproduction: pollination efficiency and seed-predator satiation. Mast seeding studies typically involve records of population-level reproduction, with less information on the characteristics of reproductive structures. Here, we use data across 6 years (2012–2017), spanning a range of population-level cone conditions, to characterize (i) white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) cone lengths and seeds per cone, and (ii) levels of seed predation. We quantified population-level cone production and collected 1399 cones from a total of 38 trees in the Huron Mountains, Michigan, USA. Linear mixed models showed that mean and minimum cone lengths varied significantly across years; both being longest during the greatest cone production year. Larger cones had more seeds and the slopes of the relationships as well as the intercepts varied significantly across years. Generalized linear mixed models and Akaike’s information criterion model selection showed that cones with insect predation damage was greatest when population-level reproduction was the lowest, with a mean proportion of cones damaged 0.82 in that year. Our findings show that white spruce cone characteristics and losses to insect seed predation vary temporally, and follow expectations based on mast seeding hypotheses. 
    more » « less
  5. Measurements of air temperature at 2 meter height made along elevation gradients from the valley bottom to the alpine at 16 sites along a west to east gradient in the Brooks Range. The purpose of this dataset was to examine spatial variation in white spruce needle nutrition and gas exchange physiology across the Brooks Range and in relation to local microclimates. 
    more » « less