Rapid Advancement of spring in the High Arctic
Rapid advancement of spring in the High Arctic
Current Biology, Vol. 17, R449-451, June 19, 2007
Toke T. Høye,1,2 Eric Post,3 Hans Meltofte,1 Niels M. Schmidt,1,4 and Mads C. Forchhammer1,4
1 Department of Arctic Environment, National Environmental Research Institute, University of Aarhus, Frederiksborgvej 399, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
2 Department of Population Biology, Institute of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
3 Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, 208 Mueller Lab, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
4 Centre for Integrated Population Ecology, www.cipe.dk
Summary
Despite uncertainties in the magnitude of expected global warming over the next century, one consistent feature of extant and projected changes is that Arctic environments are and will be exposed to the greatest warming [1]. Concomitant with such large abiotic changes, biological responses to warming at high northern latitudes are also expected to outpace those at lower latitudes. One of the clearest and most rapid signals of biological response to rising temperatures across an array of biomes has been shifts in species phenology [2, 3, 4], yet to date evidence for phenological responses to climate change has been presented from most biomes except the High Arctic [3]. Given the well-established consequences for population dynamics of shifts in the timing of life history events [5, 6], it is essential that the High Arctic be represented in assessments of phenological response to climate change. Using the most comprehensive data set available from this region, we document extremely rapid climate-induced advancement of flowering, emergence and egg-laying in a wide array of species in a high-arctic ecosystem. The strong responses and the large variability within species and taxa illustrate how easily biological interactions may be disrupted by abiotic forcing, and how dramatic responses to climatic changes can be for arctic ecosystems.
Most long-term records of phenological events are from north-temperate environments. Recent comprehensive studies from this region have reported advancements of 2.5 days per decade for European plants [7] and 5.1 days per decade across animals and plants globally [8]. In the Arctic, however, temperatures are currently increasing at nearly double the global average [1], and parts of the
Flowering dates in six plant species, median emergence dates of twelve taxa of arthropods, and clutch initiation dates in three species of birds have advanced, in some cases by over 30 days during the last decade (Figure 1B). Despite the relatively short time-series, more than 40% of the observed phenological advancements were significant at the 5% level. Corroborating jackknife procedures revealed that omitting the year to which the temporal trends (days of advancement per decade) were most sensitive (1996) resulted in even stronger trends in more than 90% of the time series analysed. The average advancement across all time series was 14.5 days per decade (see Supplemental data). Differences in species studied, the time periods covered and the spatial scale of observations make accurate comparisons to trends reported from lower latitudes difficult. Nevertheless, the surprisingly large and rapid phenological advancements across taxa reported here from the High Arctic do suggest that responses are particularly dramatic in this region.
Whereas phenological responses at lower latitudes are primarily related to temperature, organisms in snow-dominated environments such as the
The extreme advancement of spring events across taxa documented here is unlikely to be sustained over multiple decades because of the limitations in phenotypic and genotypic plasticity. Nevertheless, the observed significant trends in time series were consistently negative and closely coupled to timing of snowmelt across a wide range of species. This clearly indicates that organisms in the High Arctic respond strongly and rapidly to climatic changes. Indeed, such dramatic phenological changes may weaken or even disrupt trophic interactions among species that are crucial to successful reproduction in this highly seasonal environment.
Acknowledgements
We thank the Danish Environmental Protection Agency for supporting the monitoring programmes at Zackenberg Research Station, the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation for funding to MCF and NMS and numerous people for field assistance.
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