Data from: "Colonisation of the alpine tundra by trees: alpine neighbours assist late-seral but not early-seral conifer seedlings"

Dataset · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.15485/1771221· OSTI ID:1771221

Jabis, Meredith D. ^[1]; Germino, Matthew J. ^[2]; Kueppers, Lara M. ^[3]

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1. University of California Berkeley; University of California Berkeley
2. U.S. Geological Survey
3. University of California Berkeley

This archive contains data used to support conclusions made in “Colonisation of the alpine tundra by trees: alpine neighbours assist late-seral but not early-seral conifer seedlings”, by Jabis et al., 2020. Data were collected in the alpine field location of the Alpine Treeline Warming Experiment (ATWE), on Niwot Ridge, in the Front Range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, USA.This package includes survivorship and physiology data for limber pine (Pinus flexilis), Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii), and Rocky Mountain snowlover (Chionophila jamesii). Site climate data such as soil moisture and temperature are also included. This data package contains ten comma-separated-values (.csv) files, and two rich-text-format (.rtf) files all compressed within one folder named “Neighbor_data_repository.zip”. Both file types can be opened by text-edit softwares such as TextEdit (Mac) and Notepad (Windows). The files are also compatible with analyses softwares such as R. .csv files can also be opened by Microsoft Excel. Two geospatial datasets are also included in this archive: one keyhole markup language (.kml) file with four points marking the corners of the study site, and a compressed file containing two ESRI shapefiles (.shp). The .kml files can be opened with Google Earth or Google Maps, and the shapefiles can be opened using any geographic information system applications, including the entire ArcGIS suite, and QGIS. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The elevation mountain treeline is expected to shift upward with climate warming, and seed germination and seedling survival are critical local controls on treeline expansion. Neighboring alpine plants, either through competition for resources or through altering the microclimate, can also affect seedling emergence and survival. We asked whether establishing tree seedlings and an alpine herb are similarly sensitive to alpine plant neighbours under ambient and altered climate. We imposed active heating, watering, and neighbor removal experiments for emerging conifer seedlings and an alpine herb.We compared target plant survival, photosynthetic efficiency, and water use efficiency under ambient and experimental conditions. Picea engelmannii seedlings showed lower survival compared with Pinus flexilis three weeks following neighbour removal, and after 1 year only survived in watered plots. Pinus seedlings responded to neighbour removal by lowering the quantum yield of photosynthesis (ϕPSII). Contrary to expectations from the stress gradient hypothesis, survival was reduced without neighbours near the low-elevation range limit of Chionophila jamesii.

• Research Organization: Environmental System Science Data Infrastructure for a Virtual Ecosystem; Subalpine and Alpine Species Range Shifts with Climate Change: Temperature and Soil Moisture Manipulations to Test Species and Population Responses (Alpine Treeline Warming Experiment)
• Sponsoring Organization: U.S. DOE > Office of Science > Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
• DOE Contract Number: FG02-07ER64457; SC0007071
• OSTI ID: 1771221
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Alpine plant survival
Chionophila jamesii
EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS
EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > ECOSYSTEMS
EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > VEGETATION
EARTH SCIENCE > LAND SURFACE > LANDSCAPE
Efficiency of photosystem II
Instantaneous water use efficiency
Picea engelmannii
Pinus flexilis
R script
Seedling survival
Soil moisture
Soil temperature
Tree seedling survival
Volumetric water content
WUE
alpine tundra
climate change
competition
conifer
facilitation
plant neighbourhood
stress gradient hypothesis
tree colonisation