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This report aims to provide an update to the two studies published in 2016 and 2017 (Osipov et al 2016 & 2017) with the primary task of assessing the global funding landscape around Arctic-related research. While the previous reports were focusing on the periods 2006-2015 and 2007-2016 respectively, this report covers 2016 to 2022, using the funding data from the Dimensions[1] dataset, which includes information from more than 600 funders and 7 million awarded grants with funding totalling $2.4 trillion+ (in US Dollars).

The key findings of the updated report, based on the available data, highlight the following trends:  

·       The fields of Earth Sciences (10.3 percent) and Environmental Science (5.5 percent) are the two largest recipients of Arctic research funding. 

·       The US is the largest Arctic research nation in terms of total spending and number of projects started. It also has the most comprehensive coverage of funding sources in the dataset.  

·       Canada and Russia are the second and third largest nations in terms of number of projects started, followed by Norway and Sweden.

·       UArctic institutions are central actors in Arctic research globally. 

·       Researchers from Arctic Council Observer nations are financing a substantial amount of research on the Arctic. In particular, the UK and Japan finance a significant number of projects, followed by Germany and China with considerable numbers of Arctic-related research projects.

·       Funding from the European Union holds the position of the eighth-largest funder based on the number of projects awarded. The European Union is characterized by a few projects with large funding.

·       The analysis suggests that there is neither growth nor shrinkage in the relative volume of Arctic research funding over the period 2016–2022 in comparison with the growth of the general scientific community.

·       Private funders and foundations contribute little to Arctic research. Only one percent of the projects starting in 2016–2022 were funded privately. 

In general, the largest sources of external public funding for Arctic research come from the United States (US), Russia, Canada, and Norway, with the US being the biggest net contributor. Other kinds of funding, such as base budgets, are not described in this report. In addition, data on the public funding and funding amounts of Arctic research in Russia, Canada, and the Kingdom of Denmark are not always provided by the funders in project profiles, and net value is sometimes not disclosed by the funders themselves. 

This report specifically investigates projects initiated between 2016 and 2022, providing insights into the contemporary funding landscape of Arctic research. Understanding the geographical and institutional distribution of funding, as well as the specific areas of focus within this funding, holds significance for UArctic and Arctic Council officials. Such insights facilitate their ability to offer informed guidance to their respective members, aiding in the identification of strategic priorities.

Moreover, gaining insights into the entities funding Arctic research, and those not engaged in such funding, holds importance for UArctic and Arctic Council science officers. Armed with information about Arctic-focused endeavours they can engage with funding bodies, fostering dialogue aimed at enhancing support, and collaboration for such initiatives.

The contemporary interaction of climate and disturbance drives vegetation composition and species distribution shifts, making their respective roles difficult to disentangle. This study describes the long-term ruderal plant species distributions along the ‘Rallarvägen' in Abisko, subarctic Sweden. This trail currently serves as a hiking trail but was initially created as a construction road for a railroad from 1898 to 1903 and is paralleled by the E10 Highway since 1982. Using vegetation and climate data from 1903, 1913, 1983, and 2021, we found that warm-adapted ruderal plant species were common along the Rallarvägen shortly after railroad construction in the early 20th century. Interestingly, many of these native and non-native ruderals with relatively high temperature affinity that were present in 1903 and 1913 have since disappeared and have not reappeared, despite the substantial increase in regional temperature in recent decades. In addition, the historical disturbances have had long-lasting effects on the current spatial distribution of the ruderal vegetation. Most ruderals still reside close to the railroad tracks and are progressively filtered out with increasing distance from anthropogenically disturbed introductory points, such as train stations, where they peak in species richness – a process we term ‘horizontal directional ecological filtering', in parallel to the established concept of ‘directional ecological filtering' along elevational gradients. The historical record of ruderal plant species in the region, influenced by a century-old railroad construction, emphasizes the importance of knowing a system's disturbance history for understanding current vegetation dynamics and anticipating its future in a changing climate.

Determining how and why organisms interact is fundamental to understanding ecosystem responses to future environmental change. To assess the impact on plant-pollinator interactions, recent studies have examined how the effects of environmental change on individual interactions accumulate to generate species-level responses. Here, we review recent developments in using plant-pollinator networks of interacting individuals along with their functional traits, where individuals are nested within species nodes. We highlight how these individual-level, trait-based networks connect intraspecific trait variation (as frequency distributions of multiple traits) with dynamic responses within plant-pollinator communities. This approach can better explain interaction plasticity, and changes to interaction probabilities and network structure over spatiotemporal or other environmental gradients. We argue that only through appreciating such trait-based interaction plasticity can we accurately forecast the potential vulnerability of interactions to future environmental change. We follow this with general guidance on how future studies can collect and analyse high-resolution interaction and trait data, with the hope of improving predictions of future plant-pollinator network responses for targeted and effective conservation.

Global change is associated with variable shifts in the annual production of aboveground plant biomass, suggesting localized sensitivities with unclear causal origins. Combining remotely sensed normalized difference vegetation index data since the 1980s with contemporary field data from 84 grasslands on 6 continents, we show a widening divergence in site-level biomass ranging from +51% to −34% globally. Biomass generally increased in warmer, wetter and species-rich sites with longer growing seasons and declined in species-poor arid areas. Phenological changes were widespread, revealing substantive transitions in grassland seasonal cycling. Grazing, nitrogen deposition and plant invasion were prevalent in some regions but did not predict overall trends. Grasslands are undergoing sizable changes in production, with implications for food security, biodiversity and carbon storage especially in arid regions where declines are accelerating.

Rangelands face threats from climate and land-use change, including inappropriate climate change mitigation initiatives such as tree planting in grassy ecosystems. The marginalization and impoverishment of rangeland communities and their indigenous knowledge systems, and the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, are additional major challenges. To address these issues, we propose the wilder rangelands integrated framework, co-developed by South African and European scientists from diverse disciplines, as an opportunity to address the climate, livelihood, and biodiversity challenges in the world’s rangelands. More specifically, we present a Theory of Change to guide the design, monitoring, and evaluation of wilder rangelands. Through this, we aim to promote rangeland restoration, where local communities collaborate with regional and international actors to co-create new rangeland use models that simultaneously mitigate the impacts of climate change, restore biodiversity, and improve both ecosystem functioning and livelihoods.

The genus Cerastium includes about 200 species that are mostly found in the temperate climates of the Northern Hemisphere. Here we report the complete chloroplast genomes of Cerastium alpinum, C. arcticum and C. nigrescens. The length of cp genomes ranged from 147,940 to 148,722 bp. Their quadripartite circular structure had the same gene organization and content, containing 79 protein-coding genes, 30 tRNA genes, and four rRNA genes. Repeat sequences varied from 16 to 23 per species, with palindromic repeats being the most frequent. The number of identified SSRs ranged from 20 to 23 per species and they were mainly composed of mononucleotide repeats containing A/T units. Based on Ka/Ks ratio values, most genes were subjected to purifying selection. The newly sequenced chloroplast genomes were characterized by a high frequency of RNA editing, including both C to U and U to C conversion. The phylogenetic relationships within the genus Cerastium and family Caryophyllaceae were reconstructed based on the sequences of 71 protein-coding genes. The topology of the phylogenetic tree was consistent with the systematic position of the studied species. All representatives of the genus Cerastium were gathered in a single clade with C. glomeratum sharing the least similarity with the others.

Babia Góra massif is the only site of occurrence of the Cerastium alpinum L. in Poland, an arctic-alpine perennial plant with a wide distribution in North America, northwestern Asia, and Europe. To determine whether the isolated Polish populations are genetically distinct, we have performed an evaluation of C. alpinum from Babia Góra with the use of iPBS markers. A total number of 133 individuals of C. alpinum from seven populations representing four localizations of the species were analyzed, i.e., from Babia Góra (Poland), Alps (Switzerland), Nuolja massif (Sweden), and Kaffiøyra (Svalbard, Norway). Genetic analysis of all C. alpinum samples using eight PBS primers identified 262 bands, 79.4% of which were polymorphic. iPBS markers revealed low genetic diversity (average He = 0.085) and high population differentiation (FST = 0.617). AMOVA results confirmed that the majority of the genetic variation (62%) was recorded among populations. The grouping revealed by PCoA showed that C. alpinum from Svalbard is the most diverged population, C. alpinum from Switzerland and Sweden form a pair of similar populations, whereas C. alpinum from the Babia Góra form a heterogeneous group of four populations. Results of isolation by distance analysis suggested that the spatial distance is the most probable cause of the observed differentiation among populations. Although significant traces of a bottleneck effect were noted for all populations of C. alpinum from Babia Góra, the populations still maintain a low but significant level of genetic polymorphism. These results are of great importance for developing conservation strategies for this species in Poland.

Functional overlap among species (redundancy) is considered important in shaping competitive and mutualistic interactions that determine how communities respond to environmental change. Most studies view functional redundancy as static, yet traits within species—which ultimately shape functional redundancy—can vary over seasonal or spatial gradients. We therefore have limited understanding of how trait turnover within and between species could lead to changes in functional redundancy or how loss of traits could differentially impact mutualistic interactions depending on where and when the interactions occur in space and time. Using an Arctic bumblebee community as a case study, and 1277 individual measures from 14 species over three annual seasons, we quantified how inter- and intraspecific body-size turnover compared to species turnover with elevation and over the season. Coupling every individual and their trait with a plant visitation, we investigated how grouping individuals by a morphological trait or by species identity altered our assessment of network structure and how this differed in space and time. Finally, we tested how the sensitivity of the network in space and time differed when simulating extinction of nodes representing either morphological trait similarity or traditional species groups. This allowed us to explore the degree to which trait-based groups increase or decrease interaction redundancy relative to species-based nodes. We found that (i) groups of taxonomically and morphologically similar bees turn over in space and time independently from each other, with trait turnover being larger over the season; (ii) networks composed of nodes representing species versus morphologically similar bees were structured differently; and (iii) simulated loss of bee trait groups caused faster coextinction of bumblebee species and flowering plants than when bee taxonomic groups were lost. Crucially, the magnitude of these effects varied in space and time, highlighting the importance of considering spatiotemporal context when studying the relative importance of taxonomic and trait contributions to interaction network architecture. Our finding that functional redundancy varies spatiotemporally demonstrates how considering the traits of individuals within networks is needed to understand the impacts of environmental variation and extinction on ecosystem functioning and resilience. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Question: Dark diversity refers to the set of species that are not observed in an area but could potentially occur based on suitable local environmental conditions. In this paper, we applied both niche-based and co-occurrence-based methods to estimate the dark diversity of vascular plant species in the subarctic mountains. We then aimed to unravel the drivers explaining (a) why some locations were missing relatively more suitable species than others, and (b) why certain plant species were more often absent from suitable locations than others.

Location: The Scandinavian mountains around Abisko, northern Sweden.

Methods: We calculated the dark diversity in 107 plots spread out across four mountain trails using four different methods: two co-occurrence-based (Beals’ index and the hypergeometric method) and two niche-based (the climatic niche model and climatic niche model followed by species-specific threshold). We then applied multiple Generalized Linear Mixed-Effects Models and General Linear Models to determine which habitat characteristics and species traits contributed the most to dark diversity.

Results: The study showed a notable divergence in the predicted drivers of dark diversity depending on the method used. Nevertheless, we can conclude that plot-level dark diversity was generally 17% higher in areas at low elevations and 31% higher in areas with a low species richness.

Conclusion: Our findings call for caution when interpreting statistical findings of dark-diversity estimates. Even so, all analyses point toward an important role for natural processes such as competitive dominance as the main driver of the spatial patterns found in dark diversity in the northern Scandes.

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1-km2 resolution for 0–5 and 5–15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e. offset) between in situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1-km2 pixels (summarized from 8519 unique temperature sensors) across all the world's major terrestrial biomes, and coarse-grained air temperature estimates from ERA5-Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (−0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome-specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near-surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil-related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications.