NEWS
With people travelling all over the place, plants are spread to environments where they would not normally grow. In mountainous regions of Patagonia in Chile and Abisko in Sweden a project comparing plants’ ability to establish themselves in foreign environments is under way. Ann Milbau, a researcher at CIRC in Abisko, is taking part in this project.
The research station in Abisko is small yet really international. “It’s very interesting collaborating with people from different countries. We all have different ways of doing things and resolving problems, and we learn a lot from each other – not only about the research but also about our different cultures,” says Ann Milbau.
Ann Milbau originally comes from Belgium. After gaining her PhD she worked as a postdoc in Ireland, after which she moved to Abisko, received further research funding and then worked for three years as a research assistant. “If you’re going to live here you have to like the out-door life – and I do. In the winter there are only 20 of us working at the research station, ten of them at CIRC , so your colleagues become your friends too. One minute you’re a supervisor for your students and the next you’re out skiing with them!”
As part of a project financed by the Swedish Research Council’s programme Swedish Research Links, Ann Milbau is studying what happens when foreign species are planted at various altitudes on mountainous terrain.
A total of ten researchers are involved, including students at Master’s level. Abisko in Sweden and Patagonia in Chile are the areas being studied, as the researchers want to investigate extremities in comparable mountainous landscapes – the far north and the far south of the globe.
Last spring they planted the seeds of six common plants, including dandelion, clover and daisy, in 1 x 2 m squares at 2,700 selected sites on Abisko’s mountainous terrain. The squares are at altitudes of 400, 700 and 900 m above sea level. In some of the squares the plants get extra nutrition, whilst in others the earth is torn up to replicate how land can be disturbed by roads, construction and other human ravages.
During the autumn the same experiment was performed in Chile, to see whether the findings apply generally to mountainous areas in cold climate. “It wasn’t entirely easy to find suitable mountains with accessible roads leading to them,” explains Ann Milbau.
“In some places we had to turn back because of rivers flooding the road. Another problem in Chile is that all land is privately owned and often fenced off, so when we found an area we had to find the landowner and get permission. I used to use greenhouses and heaters to simulate different temperatures. In this study we can instead utilise natural variations in altitude and temperature. I like being able to study very specific issues in natural conditions. Mountains are fantastic as study models. The foreign plants often acquire an advantageous situation in their new environment thanks to the absence of natural adversaries,” says Ann Milbau.
Ann Milbau really loves living at the research station in Abisko.
Because of this they can become very productive, and ultimately start to dominate the vegetation and begin ousting other plant life. This can lead to the flora in one area becoming increasingly homogeneous – the invasion of a species simply means decreased biological diversity. “One of the risks of invasion by foreign plants is that the vegetation ultimately becomes the same everywhere. Typical mountain plants can be replaced by more common, everyday species.”
It is a two-year project, and the researchers regularly check how the plants in the squares are developing. In Abisko they observed during the autumn that all six of the species they had planted were growing and propagating. “The issue is what is happening now during the winter and how the plants will cope when spring comes and it alternately thaws and freezes.”
“In march my doctoral student (Jonas Lembrechts) is returning to Chile to study how the plants have developed. In October we are holding a workshop in Argentina, and in March 2015 there will be concluding fieldwork in Chile. The collaboration with South America is going very smoothly, and I think one crucial reason is that I knew the Chilean project manager back before the project started. If you want to start up an international project you need someone you can trust in and rely on, otherwise you’ve not much chance of success. It’s also important to involve local contacts in order to coordinate things, apply for permits, talk to landowners etc.”
“By the summer we will be harvesting the plants we planted in Abisko. I really love living there. The natural world and the landscape are fantastic, and it’s practical living close to the sites of my experiments. For my four-year-old son it’s normal to have an elk, fox or lemming in the back yard – something his friends and cousins in Belgium can only dream about,” says Ann Milbau.
In summer the Abisko research station is a hive of activity, there usually being over 100 researchers here doing fieldwork. “Really well-known researchers often come here, so Abisko is an excellent place for forging international contacts and establishing collaboration,” says Ann Milbau.
Focus on northern systems The Climate Impacts Research Centre (CIRC) in Abisko is a centre that forms part of the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science. At CIRC they are focusing on the effects of climate and environmental changes in northern systems.
