I am about to leave for my third field season at Lake Hazen, Quttinirpaaq National Park on northern Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada! This year the focus of my research will be to study the time of flowering and fruiting of plant species along an elevation gradient. The elevation gradient has an associated temperature gradient which I hope to use as a proxy for climate change to predict the rate of change of flowering and fruiting with rising temperatures of climate change. I can also look at the inter-annual variation in flowering and fruiting times of the 38 species I have been studying at Lake Hazen from 2013 to 2015.
The 6 plant species I have chosen for the climate change proxy study grow from Camp Hazen on the shores of Lake Hazen to almost the summit of McGill, an elevation gain of over 800m.
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Plant species in elevational gradient study, clockwise from top left:
Purple saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia); Mountain avens (Dryas integrifolia);
Arctic poppy (Papaver dahlianum); Arctic white heather (Cassiope tetragona);
Prickly saxifrage (Saxifraga tricuspidata); Sulphur buttercup (Ranunculus sulphurous) |
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