Home Institution

Scripps College

Publication Date

Fall 2018

Program Name

Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and The Arctic

Abstract

This study seeks to evaluate the morphology of three native Icelandic plant species, Alchemilla alpina, Arabidopsis petraea, and Silene uniflora, in order to determine if changing climatic conditions have had an effect on Icelandic vegetation during the twentieth century. I measured herbarium specimens collected during a time period before 1950, and during the period from the late 1960s to the present. Using traditional morphometrics methods, I searched for changes in morphological traits such as plant height, leaf length to width ratio, and leaf size, then performed two-tailed t-tests to analyze the results of the analyses. I found significant changes in the plant height and in leaf length to width ratio of two of the species, but no significant differences in leaf area between the pre-1950 and post-1950 groups. Based on these results, I believe that future studies of this kind could benefit from more extensive data collection and contribute to our knowledge of the influence of climate change on sub-Arctic vegetation and its consequences.

Disciplines

Botany | Environmental Health | Environmental Studies | International and Area Studies | Other Plant Sciences

Download

Share

Article Location

 
COinS