Ecosystem change and species persistence over time: a genome-based approach

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

ECOGEN

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2016

End date

12/31/2023

Budget

1,537,500 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Will Arctic/Alpine species and ecosystems be able to resist both direct human impact and climate changes? We are concerned about this especially for cold Alpine and Arctic regions where the effect of changing climate is expected to be the most severe. By increasing our understanding of what has driven past ecosystem changes, we may be able to foresee how current and future changes may affect species and ecosystems. We have taken advantage of recently developed genetic methods and further developed them to analyse lake sediments which are natural archives of past biodiversity. We have analysed DNA from 10 lakes in northern Fennoscandia and 14 lakes in the Alps to find out how the diversity of animals and plants has changed over time. As these two regions have experienced similar changes in climate, whereas the impact of humans has been much higher in the Alps than the Arctic, we should be able to disentangle the effects of past human land-use (hunting, husbandry, burning, agriculture) from climate change, and biotic effects on species and ecosystem changes. Our first major publication of 10 lakes from northern Fennoscandia shows that plant diversity continuously increased since the end of the last ice age, even during periods of relative climate stability. Our second large publication shows that the larges immigration of species took place 12 to 10 thousand years ago, but it took several thousand year until the ecosystem stabilised around eight thousand years ago. However, new immigration the last eight thousand years did not seem to have any effect on ecosystem stability or function, so one a robust ecosystem is established, it seems to be more resilient to changes. We have just published our first paper from one of our Alpine lakes, which shows a clear shift from climate to human influence in the catchment around 6,000 years ago. In addition, we have analysed lake sediments from the Polar Urals (Russia) and Svalbard to get a broader perspective on ecosystem changes. Our published results from both the Polar Urals and Svalbard show that mountains provide a long-term refugia for artic-alpine plants, and are therefore important for their long-term conservation. The data allow us to answer questions central to our understanding of our biological resources, such as the level of persistence of species and resilience of ecosystems to environmental drivers, the extinction risk of species, and the capacity of mountain landscapes to buffer against these changes. By combining our knowledge gained from the past, with data on current climate, land use, and ecosystem characteristics, we can make predictions of future changes and provide key knowledge for management and conservation priorities.