The Arctic Plant Aboveground Biomass Synthesis Dataset.

Plant biomass is a fundamental ecosystem attribute that is sensitive to rapid climatic changes occurring in the Arctic. Nevertheless, measuring plant biomass in the Arctic is logistically challenging and resource intensive. Lack of accessible field data hinders efforts to understand the amount, composition, distribution, and changes in plant biomass in these northern ecosystems. Here, we present The Arctic plant aboveground biomass synthesis dataset, which includes field measurements of lichen, bryophyte, herb, shrub, and/or tree aboveground biomass (g m-2) on 2,327 sample plots from 636 field sites in seven countries. We created the synthesis dataset by assembling and harmonizing 32 individual datasets. Aboveground biomass was primarily quantified by harvesting sample plots during mid- to late-summer, though tree and often tall shrub biomass were quantified using surveys and allometric models. Each biomass measurement is associated with metadata including sample date, location, method, data source, and other information. This unique dataset can be leveraged to monitor, map, and model plant biomass across the rapidly warming Arctic.

Soil freezing and N deposition: transient vs multi-year effects on plant productivity and relative species abundance.

Plant responses to increased atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition must be considered in the context of a rapidly changing climate. Reductions in snow cover with climate warming can increase the exposure of herbaceous plants to freezing, but it is unclear how freezing damage may interact with increased N availability, and to what extent freezing effects may extend over multiple years. We explored potential interactions between freezing damage and N availability in the context of plant productivity and relative species abundance in a temperate old field using both snow removal and mesocosm experiments, and assessed the legacy effects of the freezing damage over 3 yr. As expected, N addition increased productivity and freezing damage decreased productivity, but these factors were nonadditive; N addition increased productivity disproportionately in the snow removal plots, whereas extreme freezing diminished N addition responses in the mesocosm experiment. Freezing altered relative species abundances, although only the most severe freezing treatments exhibited legacy effects on total productivity over multiple growing seasons. Our results emphasize that while both increased N deposition and freezing damage can have multi-year effects on herbaceous communities, the interactions between these global change factors are contingent on the intensities of the treatments.