Arctic Vegetation Archive - Alaska: Poplar Vegetation plots.
The vegetation associated with balsam poplar stands in the Arctic Foothills of Alaska and the interior boreal forests of Alaska and Yukon was described by Breen (2014) as part of her doctoral dissertation research from 2003 to 2006 (Breen 2010). This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant (DEB-0608539) and by a Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research (University of Alaska Fairbanks) student award to Breen and by the National Science Foundation grant OPP-9996383 to Marilyn Walker.
The Arctic study area is bounded by the Noatak River (162°W) to the west and the Kongakut River (142°W) to the east. The boreal forest study area is bounded to the east by the Kobuk River (159°W) and to the west by the headwaters of the Yukon River (137°W). A new order and alliance were described, Populetalia balsamiferae and Eurybio-Populion balsamiferae, respectively. Within the alliance, two new associations were described: (1) Salici alaxensis-Populetum balsamiferae (arctic communities) with three variants (typical variant in riparian areas (11 plots), var. Androsace chamaejasme on south-facing slopes (6 plots) and var. Cystopteris montana associated with perennial springs (2 plots)), and (2) Roso acicularis-Populetum balsamiferae (boreal communities; 13 plots).
The study plots were chosen subjectively in areas of homogeneous, representative vegetation and geo-referenced. For each plant community, the minimum sampling area was determined. At each study plot, site variables were recorded. The vegetation data were analyzed using the Braun-Blanquet approach, and the plant community types were published in Breen (2014). Subsets of the vegetation and environmental data were used in several subsequent publications (Afonina & Breen 2009, Breen et al. 2009, Breen et al. 2012).
References
Afonina, O. & A. L. Breen. 2009. Dicranum dispersum (Dicranaceae) and Sciuro-hypnum ornellanum (Brachytheciaceae), new to Arctic North America. The Bryologist 112: 268-272.
Breen, A. 2010. From forest to tundra: Historical biogeography, floristic diversity and nucleotide variation in balsam poplar. PhD thesis, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.
Breen, A. L. 2014. Balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera L.) communities on the Arctic Slope of Alaska. Phytocoenologia 44: 1–24.
Breen, A. L., E. Glenn, A. Yeager, and M. S. Olson. 2009. Nucleotide diversity among natural populations of a North American poplar (Populus balsamifera, Salicaceae). New Phytolog. 182: 763–773.
Breen, A. L., D. F. Murray, and M. S. Olson. 2012. Genetic consequences of glacial survival: the late Quaternary history of balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera L.) in North America. Journal of Biogeography 39: 918–928.
