Tight coupling between leaf area index and foliage N content in arctic plant communities
Tight coupling between leaf area index and foliage N content in arctic plant communities
Date
2004-09-17
Authors
van Wijk, Mark T.
Williams, Mathew
Shaver, Gaius R.
Williams, Mathew
Shaver, Gaius R.
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Keywords
Arctic ecosystems
Productivity
Vascular plants
Productivity
Vascular plants
Abstract
The large spatial heterogeneity of arctic landscapes complicates efforts to quantify key processes of these ecosystems, for example productivity, at the landscape level. Robust
relationships that help to simplify and explain observed patterns, are thus powerful tools for
understanding and predicting vegetation distribution and dynamics. Here we present the same
linear relationship between leaf area index and total foliar nitrogen, the two factors
determining the photosynthetic capacity of vegetation, across a wide range of tundra
vegetation types in both Northern-Sweden and Alaska between leaf area indices of 0 and 1 m2
m-2, which is essentially the entire range of leaf area index values for the Arctic as a whole.
Surprisingly, this simple relationship arises as an emergent property at the plant community
level, whereas at the species level a large variability in leaf traits exists. As the relationship
between LAI and foliar N exists among such varied ecosystems, the arctic environment must
impose tight constraints on vegetation canopy development. This relationship simplifies the
quantification of vegetation productivity of arctic vegetation types as the two most important
drivers of productivity can now be estimated reliably from remotely sensed NDVI images.
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Author Posting. © The Authors, 2004. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oecologia 142 (2005): 421-427, doi:10.1007/s00442-004-1733-x.