In collaboration with UBC, UVic and SFU graduate students and faculty, and funding from the BC Parks “Living Labs for Climate Change and Conservation” we established the first ITEX experimental warming sites in the Coastal mountains of BC (Nch'kay, Garibaldi Provincial Park). In the summer of 2022, a group of 15+ graduate and undergraduate students, as well as volunteers, postdocs and faculty helped with site setup and data collection. We installed warming chambers, climate loggers and time lapse plant cameras in 24 plots across 3 tundra plant community types, which will conduct long term monitoring of plant phenology and environmental data above and belowground. This project is ongoing and continues to be a highly collaborative and exciting research program. Indigenous engagement is a critical component of this project, and we are working closely with the Squamish Nation to build lasting, land-based relationships and to co-create knowledge of the effects of global change on tundra plant species, including mapping the location of traditionally important plants in the area for harvesting. We presented preliminary results of our research at the 2022 BC Protected Areas Research Forum (BC PARF) in Nanaimo, BC.
This research site is part of the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX), which is a global network of researchers examining the impacts of warming on tundra ecosystems. The power of ITEX is the ability to perform large quantitative synthesis of observations across many sites, as research teams throughout the world carry out similar, multi-year coordinated experiments that allow them to examine vegetation change across the tundra biome using common protocols.
Check out our project website here and a video about the project here.
This research site is part of the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX), which is a global network of researchers examining the impacts of warming on tundra ecosystems. The power of ITEX is the ability to perform large quantitative synthesis of observations across many sites, as research teams throughout the world carry out similar, multi-year coordinated experiments that allow them to examine vegetation change across the tundra biome using common protocols.
Check out our project website here and a video about the project here.