For those interested in vegetation dynamics and/or what I’ve been spending time on… it turns out that interactions between plants have a stronger impact on the occurrence and abundance of those plants than grazing and trampling by herbivores. In other words, in the open fellfields of northern Finland neighbouring plants  matter more than reindeer and lemmings for vegetation.  This is a main conclusion for a recent paper of mine in Ecology – for more details you can find the paper online here. The finding of the import influence of dominant plants  fits broadly with the results an earlier study of mine (which I wrote about here).

Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum ssp. hermaphroditum; with the thin needle-like leaves) and dwarf birch (Betula nana; with the large toothed leaves) have strong impacts on neighbouring plants
Solidago virgaurea (European goldenrod) is one of the species we studied.
Reindeer affect the vegetation of Lapland – but at fine-scales in the open fells this effect is not as strong as the impact of the dominant plants

 

This research is based on fieldwork conducted at Kilpisjärvi; you can find previous blog’s about my summer fieldwork here and here. I’m looking forward to heading up to Lapland this winter (watch this space for details…) and again for another summer field season.

 

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