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PLANT COMMUNITIES

Winter in a warming Arctic

Winter conditions have typically been downplayed or oversimplified in past estimations of terrestrial Arctic vegetation shifts in relation to climate change. A study now demonstrates the importance of fine-scale variation in winter temperature in explaining the composition and diversity of Arctic plant communities.

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Fig. 1: Topographic heterogeneity creates larges variation in soil temperatures across a landscape, due in part to the insulating properties of snow and differences in the timing of snowmelt.

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Correspondence to Anne D. Bjorkman.

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Bjorkman, A.D., Gallois, E.C. Winter in a warming Arctic. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 1071–1073 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0900-3

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