How will a warming Arctic affect plant growth on Svalbard? Researchers encased plant plots in a thick layer of ice during the winter and used little greenhouses to heat up those plots in the summer.
How will a warming Arctic affect plant growth on Svalbard? Researchers encased plant plots in a thick layer of ice during the winter and used little greenhouses to heat up those plots in the summer. The surprise? The plants that got the harshest treatment did just fine.
For five Januarys starting in 2016, researchers and students from NTNU travelled to a small valley outside of Svalbard’s main city with big jugs of liquid water and an unusual goal: To encase selected plant plots in a thick cover of ice.
Their focus was a plant community dominated by the polar willow, a critical year-round food for Svalbard’s reindeer population.
Read More at: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Here’s what one of the three experimental sites looked like in Adventdalen. The plexiglass frames around some of the plots were designed to simulate warmer temperatures. Plots that didn’t have the plexiglass enclosures were protected from grazing reindeer to prevent the animals from eating the scientific evidence. (Photo Credit: Mathilde Le Moullec)
