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A multiscale study of tree-line dynamics in southwestern Yukon.

Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION

A CONSISTENT PREDICTION OF GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH is that climate warming will be greatest in Arctic and Subarctic regions, and recent trends certainly support these predictions. The potential ecological impacts of such change have been the subject of numerous studies, and one of the more common hypotheses is that the transition between forest and tundra zones--generally referred to as the tree line--will undergo a significant change as a result. Several studies have already observed changes at the latitudinal tree line in northern Canada, Alaska, and Russia in response to warming over the past 150 years, and analogous changes have been observed in many mountainous regions around the globe. However, these changes have not been uniform in type and extent. In some regions, trees have invaded tundra, extending the altitudinal or latitudinal limit of tree growth. In other regions, the tree component has not changed, but an increase in the number and size of woody shrubs has been documented. In still other regions, no change has been observed at all. The pattern of how and when these changes occurred also varies considerably between locations. It seems, then, that the process of tree-line change is not as general as one might initially anticipate and that responses to climatic change are mediated by environmental conditions at smaller, more local scales.

The overall aim of my research project is to shed light on how the forest-tundra ecotone in the mountainous Kluane region of southwest Yukon will respond...

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