The underappreciated roles of dwarf-shrubs in responding to and influencing global climate change (DURIN)
Informations
- Funding country
Norway- Acronym
- -
- URL
- -
- Start date
- 1/1/2022
- End date
- 12/31/2026
- Budget
- 1,537,500 EUR
Fundings
| Name | Role | Start | End | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FRIMEDBIO - Independent projects - Medicine, Health Sciences and Biology | Grant | - | - | 1,537,500 EUR |
Abstract
Dwarf-shrubs are a dominant plant functional group across the boreal, arctic, and alpine biomes. In fact, dwarf-shrub dominated heaths and forests cover 58% of the Norwegian land area. While small in stature, dwarf-shrubs play important roles for biodiversity, ecology and ecosystem functioning in the habitats in which they occur. The provide, for example, important food resources for grazers, pollinators, and people; and habitat for other plants, insects, rodents, and birds. Through interactions with belowground fungal networks, they play critical roles in carbon sequestration and long-term carbon storage in soils, suggesting that dwarf-shrubs may play a critical role in feedbacs from land to the climate system. But dwarf-shrubs are also variable, they can be ever-green or deciduous, and differ in their ecological responses, tolerances, and interactions. DURIN will explore the interplay between dwarf-shrubs and climate across biomes and habitats in Norway, integrating plant physiology, ecology, and ecosystem science. Using distributed observational systems, field experiments, and growth chamber studies; we will obtain fundamental knowledge on how climate change directly and indirectly affects this important plant functional group, and it’s ecosystem functions and services. This improved process understanding will be integrated in land surface and earth system models to understand the role and contribution of dwarf-shrubs in the feedbacks from terrestrial vegetation to the climate system. Predicting how the biosphere will respond to global climate and environmental changes, and in turn how these responses will feed back to and influence the climate and earth system, is an urgent cross-disciplinary scientific challenge. Dwarf-shrubs are an important plant functional type in boreal ecosystems, and DURIN will use them as a model system to advance climate response and feedback research.