Working on the Plantation

Happy Labor Day! As the rest of you most likely enjoyed a relaxing holiday with your family and friends, the Team geared up for a full day of labor at a test site called the Plantation. The Plantation is a tundra field on the edge of the taiga (boreal) forest that sits directly above a massive, underground layer of permafrost. We surveyed the characteristics of over 350 white spruce seedlings. These seedlings were planted five summers ago to test how trees can survive on the open tundra. To understand their progress, we measured specific growth characteristics like the:
- overall heights of live and dead tissue present
- number of branch whorls to estimate age
- numbers and lengths of lateral branches to track development patterns
- quantity of apical meristems (new top growth) and terminal buds (new side growth) to estimate its reproductive potential
We discovered that the vast majority of the seedlings had suffered severe weather damage, and there were a significant number of fatalities. While many still have some signs of living tissue, much of their reproductive structures were drastically damaged or missing.

This brings me to some more questions I have for you today: What does the limited or lack of white spruce seedling survival on the tundra edge indicate about the present state of global climate change in the Arctic? How can this data be used in future research?

Check out below for a Live From the Field Update!