Lærke Stewart

University of South-Eastern Norway | USN · Department of Mathematics and Science Education

The bioavailability of essential and non-essential elements in vegetation is expected to influence the performance of free-ranging terrestrial herbivores. However, attempts to relate the use of geochemical landscapes by animal populations directly to reproductive output are currently lacking. Here we measured concentrations of 14 essential and non-...

Understanding how different taxa respond to abiotic characteristics of the environment is of key interest for understanding the assembly of communities. Yet, whether eDNA data will suffice to accurately capture environmental imprints has been the topic of some debate. In this study, we characterised patterns of species occurrences and co-occurrence...

Factors shaping arthropod and plant community structure at fine spatial scales are poorly understood. This includes microclimate, which likely plays a large role in shaping local community patterns, especially in heterogeneous landscapes characterised by high microclimatic variability in space and in time. We explored differences in local microcli...

The Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, and plant communities are responding through shifts in species abundance, composition and distribution. However, the direction and magnitude of local plant diversity changes have not been explored thus far at a pan-Arctic scale. Using a compilation of 42,234 records of 490 vascular pl...

Changes in Arctic vegetation can have important implications for trophic interactions and ecosystem functioning leading to climate feedbacks. Plot-based vegetation surveys provide detailed insight into vegetation changes at sites around the Arctic and improve our ability to predict the impacts of environmental change on tundra ecosystems. Here, we...

Aim Climate change results in increasing temperature and modified precipitation regimes in the High Arctic. Models can help anticipate the consequences on future biotic dynamics, e.g. vegetation. In rugged terrain, forecasts should consider fine‐scale spatial variability in environmental conditions that are proximally linked to plant performance. H...

Arctic plant communities are altered by climate changes. The magnitude of these alterations depends on whether species distributions are determined by macroclimatic conditions, by factors related to local topography, or by biotic interactions. Our current understanding of the relative importance of these conditions is limited due to the scarcity of...

How species interact modulate their dynamics, their response to environmental change, and ultimately the functioning and stability of entire communities. Work conducted at Zackenberg, Northeast Greenland, has changed our view on how networks of arctic biotic interactions are structured, how they vary in time, and how they are changing with current...

Aim The A rctic has experienced marked climatic differences between glacial and interglacial periods and is now subject to a rapidly warming climate. Knowledge of the effects of historical processes on current patterns of diversity may aid predictions of the responses of vegetation to future climate change. We aim to test whether plant species and...