Project description
Exploring the Arctic’s warming dilemma
As the Arctic experiences unprecedented warming, its once-stoic landscapes are undergoing profound transformations, particularly in vegetation. This alteration poses a critical dilemma: will the increased vegetation change release stored carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change, or sequester it within the Arctic soils? The ERC-funded ArcticEDGE project will answer this question. It will decode the intricate web of consequences stemming from this warming-driven vegetation shift and its global climate implications. Specifically, the project will quantify how plant traits relate to carbon processes. It will also predict trait changes in response to warming and evaluate the role of Arctic vegetation in global climate feedback. The findings will be used to inform global climate models.
Objective
ArcticEDGE will identify the consequences of warming-driven vegetation change for the functioning of Arctic ecosystems, particularly the cycling of carbon, and the impact on the global climate. The Arctic is the fastest-warming region on Earth, and Arctic soils contain more than double the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere. Changes in the vegetation can influence whether this carbon is released into the atmosphere, thus contributing to additional climate warming, or stored in soils and plant biomass. Until now, we have lacked the ability to scale up from site-specific, local-scale studies to generalizable vegetation-function relationships relevant for the entire Arctic. ArcticEDGE will: 1) quantify the relationships between widely-measured plant functional and phenological traits and three key ecosystem processes related to global carbon cycling: litter decomposition, primary production, and fire dynamics, using field and laboratory experiments, 2) predict the rate with which these traits are likely to change in response to warming by identifying the relative contribution of turnover in species identity, shifts in abundance, phenotypic plasticity and genetic differentiation to trait variability and change over time, 3) determine the contribution of Arctic vegetation change to global-scale vegetation-climate feedbacks by combining knowledge from aims 1 and 2 with multi-decadal records of vegetation change and responses to experimental warming and precipitation at hundreds of locations across the Arctic, and 4) produce quantifiable outputs that will feed directly into Dynamic Global Vegetation and Earth System models to determine the consequences of Arctic vegetation change for the global climate. The knowledge generated by ArcticEDGE will contribute both to our theoretical understanding of how plants influence and are influenced by their environment as well as inform urgent efforts to project future changes in the global climate with greater precision.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic zones
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems
- agricultural sciences agricultural biotechnology biomass
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
-
HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
See all projects funded under this programme
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
See all projects funded under this funding scheme
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2022-STG
See all projects funded under this callHost institution
Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
405 30 Goeteborg
Sweden
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.