Ruth Errington | ALES Graduate Seminar

Event details: A graduate exam seminar is a presentation of the student’s final research project for their degree.
This is an ALES PhD Final Exam Seminar by Ruth Errington. This seminar is open to the general public to attend.

PhD with Drs. Ellen Macdonald and Dan Thompson.

Zoom Link: https://ualberta-ca.zoom.us/j/94107576848?pwd=PXGalYVNGejyEgwH5kNA6c2XmoPehn.1

Meeting ID: 941 0757 6848
Passcode: 847218

Thesis Topic: A decade of change?  The effect of ongoing climate warming in plant and lichen communities along permafrost gradients in forests and peatlands of northwestern Canada

Abstract: 

Within Canada, the greatest climate warming is occurring in the north-west, where forests exist within a landscape matrix of peat deposits and ice-rich permafrost environments that are sensitive to climate warming. I explored vegetation-climate relationships and documented 10-year changes to plant and lichen communities, within forests and peatlands, across a climatic gradient within the Mackenzie Valley region of northwestern Canada. Local conditions exerted the strongest control on plant and lichen communities and established conditions (i.e. tree canopy, accumulated peat deposit and permafrost) continued to regulate the understory growth environment, in the absence of disturbance. These conditions largely overrode external climate forcing, preventing dramatic, short-term changes to the understory communities. However, disturbances to these controlling factors (i.e. thawing of permafrost) can have dramatic and long-lasting effects on the plant and lichen communities. This dissertation demonstrates the complex nature of vegetation change in response to climatic shifts in northern forests and peatlands and contributes to our understanding of ecological processes and ongoing responses of these systems, elucidating both long-term controls and short-term dynamics that interact to determine community composition.