A 25-year Survey of Geoecological Change in the Scandes Mountains of Sweden |
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| Authors: | Leif Kullman |
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| Institution: | Department of Physical Geography, UmeåUnivesity, Umeå, Sweden |
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| Abstract: | The paper reviews various kinds of geoecological change in the tree-limit ecotone of the Scandes Mountains during the period 1970–95. The focus of the study is a part of a regional network of sites intended for long-term tree-limit monitoring, with special stress on effects of climatic variability. The elevational tree-limits of Betula pubescens sp. Sortuosa, Picea abies and Pinus sylvestris, which rose in response to the climatic amelioration earlier this century, now show clear symptoms of increasing climatic stress and disturbance. This manifests as defoliation, growth recession and reproductive failure, locally leading to some initial elevational tree-limit retraction (unbalanced mortality). Defoliation was preceded by decades of weak summer cooling and an increasingly maritime climate, but recently it correlates significantly with low winter soil temperatures, causing death of needles, shoots and buds. In some habitats, Betula pubescens has suffered from mechanical stress and disturbance by increased snow accumulation. Tree-limit decline is paralleled by analogous responses of high-elevation boreal forests as well as the ground cover, encompassing elevational range-limit retraction of certain plant species, deterioration of alpine/subalpine dwarf-shrub heaths and terricolous lichen mats. These processes coincide with indications of enhanced periglacial activity, chiefly wind deflation of frost-heaved top-soils at exposed sites. Presumably, reindeer trampling and grazing play a certain role in the latter context, although this disturbance interacts with climate cooling and increased storminess. Short-term extreme events, particularly concerning winter climate (e.g. ground frost), represent previously underrated disturbance mechanisms in cold-stressed, high-altitude boreal forest. The results suggest mechanisms of tree-layer regression, which lag behind the most severe stresses and disturbances by decades and make cold-marginal trees increasingly sensitive to climatic extremes and, in addition, unable to respond progressively to later positive weather anomalies, due to major defoliation and hypothetical xylem cavitation. The recorded changes are logical in consequence of the irregular climatic cooling and a more maritime climate since the late 1930s. In a wider perspective, the results fit a current pattern of natural geoecological destabilization and rapid vegetation change in the North Atlantic region. In addition, the results are discussed in the perspective of global climate change and biogeographical records over the past few decades. |
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| Keywords: | climate variablility defoliation monitoring periglacial activity tree-limit regression wind-deflation |
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