In collaboration with UBC graduate students and faculty (Henry, Hewitt, and Angert labs), 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 region, Garibaldi Provincial Park). A group of 15+ graduate and undergraduate students, as well as volunteers, postdocs and faculty helped with site setup and data collection in the summer of 2022 & 2023. 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. We presented this research at the BC Protected Areas Research Forum (BC PARF) in Nanaimo, BC and are currently writing manuscripts for publication from our first 2 years of data collection. 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. One of the first projects we are co-developing is creating maps of the locations of traditionally important plants in the area for harvesting.
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.