Effect of temperature increase on net primary production of cryptogamic plants in the high Arctic tundra ecosystem

Abstract

A significant temperature increase in Arctic tundra ecosystems was observed during 20th century and the temperature increase is expected to be most pronounced in the Arctic at the end of this century. This paper introduces photosynthetic characteristics of three cryptogamic plants (moss, lichen and biological soil crust) on the glacier foreland in the high Arctic, Ny-Alesund, Svalbard, Norway. We constructed a model for estimating the net primary production of the three plants to evaluate an effect of temperature increase on the net primary production.