Using an integrated view of plant communities to understand the effects of global climate change

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Every ecosystem worldwide is now subject to novel species introductions, global climate change, and biodiversity loss.  Mountainous regions contain a large portion of the world's remaining natural ecosystems and species diversity and are likely particularly sensitive to changes in climate.  In the Canadian north near Kluane Lake, research is proposed herein that explores the relative importance of interactions between alpine plants in the context of global change such as increased temperature.  The primary objective is to develop a globally relevant, yet autonomous Canadian research programme that quantitatively explores the relative importance of plant-plant interactions and community organization in responding to and potentially mediating the effects of global climate change and species introductions.  Detailed vegetation and environmental measurements and manipulations are developed.  Experiments proposed include vegetation mapping, temperature and competition manipulated concurrently, selective species removal to simulate non-random loss due to climate, and spatial pattern of plants varied to test importance of natural species associations.  This work will lead to increased predictive power, a better understanding of the importance of species within alpine meadows, and further our knowledge of factors that allow plant communities to persist.  These findings will also facilitate more plant-community based management strategies to conserve threatened ecosystems.