The Arctic BT - Vegetation history

Abstract

In the earliest phytogeographic studies of the Arctic, historical explanation of plant distributions were essentially hypotheses, formulated from floristic data (e.g. Hultén, 1937). Auer (1927) in Europe, Wenner (1947) in Labrador, and Iversen (1952–3) in Greenland were among the first palaeoecologists to test biogeographic hypotheses in the Arctic, concerning themselves, for example, with the location and character of postulated plant-refugia, and the ways in which plants may have spread from refugia and from unglaciated terrain south of the ice-sheets. This phytogeographic emphasis continues to be important in palaeoecological studies (Fredskild, 1973, 1983a, 1983b; Funder, 1979; Ritchie, 1984a). A second major objective of arctic palaeoecological research is the determination of past climatic change, as reflected by vegetational change. Here arctic workers may have an advantage over their temperate-zone colleagues in that the arctic treeline is sensitive to climatic change. The major concerns of ecologists, such as community dynamics in response to disturbance, and successional trends, have only recently received attention from arctic palaeoecologists (Birks, 1980; Fredskild, 1967a, 1967b; Ovenden, 1982; Ritchie, 1977, 1982, 1984a, 1985) despite the fact that classic studies of primary succession were made in the sub-Arctic (Crocker and Major, 1955; Viereck, 1966, 1970). Arctic plant communities are generally less diverse than temperate communities, and thus offer advantages for studying community dynamics on both short and long time-scales.