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  1. Abstract

    Tundra shrubs reflect climate sensitivities in their growth-ring widths, yet tissue-specific shrub chronologies are poorly studied. Further, the relative importance of regional climate patterns that exert mesoscale precipitation and temperature influences on tundra shrub growth has been explored in only a few Arctic locations. Here, we investigateBetula nanagrowth-ring chronologies from adjacent dry heath and moist tussock tundra habitats in arctic Alaska in relation to local and regional climate. Mean shrub and five tissue-specific ring width chronologies were analyzed using serial sectioning of above- and below-ground shrub organs, resulting in 30 shrubs per site with 161 and 104 cross sections from dry and moist tundra, respectively.Betula nanagrowth-ring widths in both habitats were primarily related to June air temperature (1989–2014). The strongest relationships with air temperature were found for ‘Branch2’ chronologies (dry site:r = 0.78, June 16, DOY = 167; moist site:r = 0.75, June 9, DOY = 160). Additionally, below-ground chronologies (‘Root’ and ‘Root2’) from the moist site were positively correlated with daily mean air temperatures in the previous late-June (‘Root2’ chronology:r = 0.57, pDOY = 173). Most tissue-specific chronologies exhibited the strongest correlations with daily mean air temperature during the period between 8 and 20 June. Structural equation modeling indicated that shrub growth is indirectly linked to regional Arctic and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (AO and PDO) climate indices through their relation to summer sea ice extent and air temperature. Strong dependence ofBetula nanagrowth on early growing season temperature indicates a highly coordinated allocation of resources to tissue growth, which might increase its competitive advantage over other shrub species under a rapidly changing Arctic climate.

     
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  2. Vertebrate herbivore excrement is thought to influence nutrient cycling, plant nutrition, and growth; however, its importance is rarely isolated from other aspects of herbivory, such as trampling and leaf removal, leaving questions about the extent to which herbivore effects are due to feces. We hypothesized that as a source of additional nutrients, feces would directly increase soil N concentrations and N2O emission, alleviate plant, and microbial nutrient limitations, resulting in increased plant growth and foliar quality, and increase CH4 emissions. We tested these hypotheses using a field experiment in coastal western Alaska,USA, where we manipulated goose feces such that naturally grazed areas received three treatments:feces removal, ambient amounts of feces, or double ambient amounts of feces. Doubling feces marginally increased NH4 +-N in soil water, whereas both doubled feces and feces removal significantly increased NO3--N; N2O flux was also higher in removal plots. Feces removal marginally reduced root biomass and significantly reduced productivity (that is, GPP) in the second year, measured as greater CO2 emissions. Doubling feces marginally increased foliar chemical quality by increasing %N and decreasing C:N. Treatments did not influence CH4 flux. In short, feces removal created sites poorer in nutrients, with reduced root growth, graminoid nutrient uptake, and productivity. While goose feces alone did not create dramatic changes in nutrient cycling in western Alaska, they do appear to be an important source of nutrients for grazed areas and to contribute to greenhouse gas exchange as their removal increased emissions of CO2 and N2O to the atmosphere. 
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  3. Abstract

    Climate change, including both increasing temperatures and changing snow regimes, is progressing rapidly in the Arctic, leading to changes in plant phenology and in the seasonal patterns of plant properties, such as tissue nitrogen (N) content and community aboveground biomass. However, significant knowledge gaps remain over how these seasonal patterns vary among Arctic plant functional groups (i.e., shrubs, grasses, and forbs) and across large geographical areas. We used three years of in situ field vegetation sampling from an 80,000‐km2area in Arctic Alaska, remotely sensed vegetation data (daily normalized difference vegetation index [NDVI]), and modeled output of snow‐free date to determine and model the seasonal trends and primary controls on leaf percent nitrogen and biomass (in grams per square meter) among Arctic vegetation functional groups. We determined relative vegetation phenology stage at a 500‐m spatial scale resolution, defined as the number of days between the date of the seasonal maximum NDVI and the vegetation field sampling date, and relative snow phenology stage (90‐m spatial scale) was determined as the number of days between the date of snow‐free ground and the sampling date. Models including relative phenology stage were particularly important for explaining seasonal variability of %N in shrubs, graminoids, and forbs. Similarly, vegetation and snow phenology stages were also important for modeling seasonal biomass of shrubs and graminoids; however, for all functional groups, the models explained only a small amount of seasonal variability in biomass. Relative phenology stage was a stronger predictor of %N and biomass than geographic position, indicating that localized controls on phenology, acting at spatial scales of 500 m and smaller, are critical to understanding %N and biomass.

     
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  4. Abstract Background

    Caribou and reindeer across the Arctic spend more than two thirds of their lives moving in snow. Yet snow-specific mechanisms driving their winter ecology and potentially influencing herd health and movement patterns are not well known. Integrative research coupling snow and wildlife sciences using observations, models, and wildlife tracking technologies can help fill this knowledge void.

    Methods

    Here, we quantified the effects of snow depth on caribou winter range selection and movement. We used location data of Central Arctic Herd (CAH) caribou in Arctic Alaska collected from 2014 to 2020 and spatially distributed and temporally evolving snow depth data produced by SnowModel. These landscape-scale (90 m), daily snow depth data reproduced the observed spatial snow-depth variability across typical areal extents occupied by a wintering caribou during a 24-h period.

    Results

    We found that fall snow depths encountered by the herd north of the Brooks Range exerted a strong influence on selection of two distinct winter range locations. In winters with relatively shallow fall snow depth (2016/17, 2018/19, and 2019/20), the majority of the CAH wintered on the tundra north of the Brooks Range mountains. In contrast, during the winters with relatively deep fall snow depth (2014/15, 2015/16, and 2017/18), the majority of the CAH caribou wintered in the mountainous boreal forest south of the Brooks Range. Long-term (19 winters; 2001–2020) monitoring of CAH caribou winter distributions confirmed this relationship. Additionally, snow depth affected movement and selection differently within these two habitats: in the mountainous boreal forest, caribou avoided areas with deeper snow, but when on the tundra, snow depth did not trigger significant deep-snow avoidance. In both wintering habitats, CAH caribou selected areas with higher lichen abundance, and they moved significantly slower when encountering deeper snow.

    Conclusions

    In general, our findings indicate that regional-scale selection of winter range is influenced by snow depth at or prior to fall migration. During winter, daily decision-making within the winter range is driven largely by snow depth. This integrative approach of coupling snow and wildlife observations with snow-evolution and caribou-movement modeling to quantify the multi-facetted effects of snow on wildlife ecology is applicable to caribou and reindeer herds throughout the Arctic.

     
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  5. Abstract

    The deuterium excess (d‐excess) of precipitation varies seasonally at sites across the globe, an observation that has often been linked to seasonal changes in oceanic evaporation conditions, continental moisture recycling, and subcloud raindrop re‐evaporation. However, there have been very few studies to quantify and evaluate the relative importance of these processes. Here, we revisit the mechanisms of precipitation d‐excess seasonality in low‐latitudes and mid‐latitudes through a new analysis of precipitation isotope databases along with climate reanalysis products and moisture tracking models. In low‐latitudes, the raindrop re‐evaporation effect, indicated by local relative humidity, exerts a strong and prevalent control on observed d‐excess seasonality and overprints the effect of oceanic evaporation conditions. In mid‐latitudes, the effect of oceanic evaporation conditions becomes stronger and seems dominant in the observed d‐excess seasonality. However, the ultimate d‐excess signals are produced after complex modulations by several reinforcing or competing processes, including prior distillations, moisture recycling, supersaturation in snow formation, and raindrop re‐evaporation. Among these processes, substantial increases in the proportion of recycled moisture during the warm and dry season do not produce higher precipitation d‐excess in mid‐latitude continental interiors. We develop a simple seasonal water storage model to show that contributions of previously evaporated residual water storage and higher transpiration fractions may lead to relatively low d‐excess in evapotranspiration fluxes during periods of enhanced continental moisture recycling. This study underscores the ubiquitous nonconservative behavior in d‐excess throughout the water cycle, as opposed to using d‐excess as a simple tracer for remote conditions at oceanic moisture sources.

     
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  8. Abstract

    Rapid Arctic climate change is leading to woody plant‐dominated ecosystems with potential consequences for caribou foraging and nutritional ecology. While warming has been clearly linked to shrub expansion, the influence of higher temperatures on variables linked to the leaf‐level quality of caribou forage is equivocal. Moreover, warming results in a complex set of ecosystem changes that operate on different timescales such as not only rapidly accelerating phenology, but also slowly increasing thaw depth and plant access to soil resources. Here, we compare changes in leaf nitrogen (N) concentration, digestibility, and protein‐precipitating capacity (PPC) in short‐term (i.e., <1–2 summers) and long‐term (approximately 25 years) experimental warming plots with ambient temperature plots for three species commonly included in caribou summer diets:Salix pulchra(diamond‐leaf willow),Betula nana(dwarf birch), andEriophorum vaginatum(cottongrass). Short‐term warming modestly decreased leaf N concentration inB. nana.Long‐term and short‐term warming slightly increased the digestibility ofS. pulchra, but only short‐term warming increased digestibility inB. nana. Greater dry matter digestibility in both shrubs occurred through reductions in the lignin and cutin quantity in plant cells. Long‐term warming had no impact on PPC and equivocal impact on digestible protein ofB. nana. Overall, we found short‐term warming to be more impactful on forage quality than long‐term warming at Toolik Lake, Alaska. Apart from a long‐term warming reduction of approximately 13% in acid detergent lignin inS. pulchraandB. nana, other differences were only observed in the short‐term warming plots. Hence, our results indicate acclimation of plants to long‐term warming or possible negative feedback in the system to reduce warming effects. We suggest that warming summers may have a lesser effect on caribou forage than changes in winter precipitation or the influence of climate change on the abundance of critical species in the caribou diet.

     
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  9. Abstract

    Dramatic increases in air temperature and precipitation are occurring in the High Arctic (>70°N), yet few studies have characterized the long‐term responses of High Arctic ecosystems to the interactive effects of experimental warming and increased rain. Beginning in 2003, we applied a factorial summer warming and wetting experiment to a polar semidesert in northwest Greenland. In summer 2018, we assessed several metrics of ecosystem structure and function, including plant cover, greenness, ecosystem CO2exchange, aboveground (leaf, stem) and belowground (litter, root, soil) carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) concentrations (%) and pools, as well as leaf and soil stable isotopes (δ13C and δ15N). Wetting induced the most pronounced changes in ecosystem structure, accelerating the expansion ofSalix arcticacover by 370% and increasing aboveground C, N, and biomass pools by 94%–101% and root C, N, and biomass pools by 60%–122%, increases which coincided with enhanced net ecosystem CO2uptake. Further, wetting combined with warming enhanced plot‐level greenness, whereas in isolation neither wetting nor warming had an effect. At the plant level, the effects of warming and wetting differed among species and included warming‐linked decreases in leaf N and δ15N inS. arctica, whereas leaf N and δ15N inDryas integrifoliadid not respond to the climate treatments. Finally, neither plant‐ nor plot‐level C and N allocation patterns nor soil C, N, δ13C, or δ15N concentrations changed in response to our manipulations, indicating that these ecosystem metrics may resist climate change, even in the longer term. In sum, our results highlight the importance of summer precipitation in regulating ecosystem structure and function in arid parts of the High Arctic, but they do not completely refute previous findings of resistance in some High Arctic ecosystem properties to climate change.

     
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