Biocomplexity associated with controls of sensitivity and stability in tundra systems over decadal time scales
Principal Investigators: Dr. Patrick J. Webber and Dr. Craig TweedieDuring this project a symposium will be convened to explore how biocomplexity controls the sensitivity and stability of tundra systems over decadal time scales. Established laterally-thinking keynote speakers will be selected from the arctic science community and from experts with experience in other biomes. The symposium will appraise existing knowledge and prepare a science plan to identify avenues of research examining the synergy of complexity, function and dynamics in tundra systems.
The Arctic is a model system for studying issues of biocomplexity. It is an evolutionarily young system with low primary productivity and is comparatively species poor with less than 6% of the world's biota being found in this region.
Nonetheless, it is a heterogeneous and dynamic system with high plant genetic diversity both at the species and community level. Although much of the Arctic remains in a natural state, it is increasingly subjected to impacts from climate change, growing human presence, overexploitation of resources, habitat disturbance, and pollution. Some tundra communities and land surfaces are stable and/or resilient to environmental change while others are unstable and susceptible to long-term change.
The question of how biological systems, which couple living and non-living elements and internal mechanisms for optimization, regulate system sensitivity and stability over spatial and temporal scales will be the focus of the symposium. Symposium participants will be asked to consider five overarching operational ideas.
- The notion of Biocomplexity expresses the understanding that properties emerge from the interplay of behavioral, biological, chemical, physical, and social interactions that affect, sustain, or are modified by living organisms, including humans.
- Although the drivers of change and the means to measure the gross pattern, direction, magnitude and rate of change are generally known for tundra systems, the principal challenge is to understand the mechanics and internal processes of change and how system change occurs.
- Parsimonious and reductionist approaches to system science should be challenged in favor of holistic and integrative approaches that seek understanding of organizational, mechanical, interacting and emergent system properties.
- The time frame of focus will be decadal since this is commensurate with the human life span that maintains a focus on real world issues.
- Arctic regions are important to global biogeochemical cycles all of which are linked to the carbon cycle. Carbon can be traced over multiple spatial and temporal scales, making it a useful functional integrator that can enhance understanding of biocomplexity in these systems.
- Drivers of change - What climatic, successional, heterotrophic, and anthropogenic processes are/aren't driving changes and how do these confound as cumulative impacts across different scales?
- Patterns of change - Where is/isn't tundra changing and how are various patterns associated with different drivers of change?
- Sensitivity to change - Why are/aren't certain tundra types more sensitive and/or vulnerable to change than others and can sensitivity and vulnerability in tundra systems be predicted?
- Responses to change - Why are/aren't certain tundra at various organizational levels (i.e., species to communities) more resistant and resilient to change than others and why is change linear/non-linear?
- Implications to carbon cycling - How will/won't carbon cycling adjust to change across multiple spatial (leaf to landscape scales) and temporal (minutes to decades) scales in arctic systems and what feedbacks to drivers of change will/won't occur as a result?