Disentangling the direct and indirect consequences of climate on ecosystems is key to understanding and predicting the full spectrum of biodiversity and functional responses to a changing climate. Because biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are linked through biotic interactions within and among trophic levels and functional groups 5, 13, indirect impacts of climate, operating on and via these interactions, are also of critical importance. In turn, these impacts will aggregate to affect ecosystem-level processes such as productivity, decomposition, and carbon and nutrient fluxes in response to climate change 11, 12. ![]() Individual organism’s physiological rates such as photosynthesis and respiration are directly regulated by climatic factors such as temperature and precipitation 9, 10. These impacts operate through both direct and indirect pathways. The data can be combined with longer-term climate data and plant population, community, ecosystem, and functional trait data collected within the VCG.Ĭlimate change poses a threat to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning of alpine ecosystems by altering plant, animal and microbial distributions 1, 2, community composition 3, and food webs 4 as well as affecting biotic interactions between organisms and functional groups 5, 6, 7, 8. The dataset consists of 5,412 biomass records, 360 species-level biomass records, 1,084,970 soil temperature records, 4,771 soil moisture records, 17,181 plant records covering 206 taxa, 16,656 seedling records, 3,696 ecosystem carbon flux measurements, and 1,244 reflectance measurements. ![]() Over six years, we recorded biomass removed, soil microclimate, plant community composition and structure, seedling recruitment, ecosystem carbon fluxes, and reflectance in 384 experimental and control plots. Across twelve sites in the Vestland Climate Grid (VCG) spanning 4 ☌ in growing season temperature and 2000 mm in mean annual precipitation across boreal and alpine regions of Western Norway, we conducted a fully factorial plant functional group removal experiment (graminoids, forbs, bryophytes). When replicated along climate gradients, they can assess changes in interactions among species or functional groups with climate. ![]() Plant removal experiments allow assessment of the role of biotic interactions among species or functional groups in community assembly and ecosystem functioning.
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