Vegetation

It is easy to see change in your local environment by looking at the plants and trees that grow around you. Plants, whether wild or planted in your garden, are highly adapted to specific conditions. They’re specialized to respond to temperature, light, precipitation, soils, the presence of insects and pollinators, and the length of the growing season.

As environmental conditions change in a particular place, plants will either adapt or die out. Flowering plants can adapt by blooming earlier or later in the season. Tree species may start to appear in new places outside their normal range, such as more southern varieties moving farther north as warming temperatures create the necessary growing conditions. New types of flowers or vegetables survive in home gardens as the growing season, amount of rain, and soil conditions change. If a plant cannot adapt, it will suffer the consequences and no longer be able to survive in a particular location.

Plant Adaptations

A Sitka rose in full bloom.

© Karen Brewster

©Skagway is surrounded by coastal rainforest, dominated by tall spruce and cedar trees with a rich and dense underbrush. Alpine tundra occurs at the higher elevations above the tree line. The streets of Skagway are lined with Sitka Rose bushes with rosehips the size of golf balls, and the mountain ash tree, a thriving introduced species. Big, bright flowers pop out of planters around town, and huge rhubarb plants, zucchini, peas, and other vegetables are popular garden varieties.

Local gardeners and foragers see both positive and negative effects on plants from warmer temperatures brought on by climate change. Longer blooming and growing seasons lead to increased garden harvests. In contrast, it’s sometimes harder to find and gather wild plants when they grow in new and different places.

Things are blooming longer into the season. – Dorothy Brady, Skagway

The lilac and the roses are blooming later. And the raspberries. – Betsy Albecker, Skagway

The blueberries used to be lower on the summit. Now I’m climbing higher and higher to pick blueberries as they’re moving uphill. – Dorothy Brady

Basic changes to the landscape also occur as vegetation shifts. New species arrive and take over. Existing species start appearing in new locations.

On Long Bay beach, our beach at Nahku Bay, and the Skagway beach, there used to be all bare rock or sand. Now, they’re covered with grass way down into the tide area. – Betsy Albecker

Plant Diseases

A healthy rose hips plant.

© Karen Brewster

Warmer temperatures and different growing conditions mean new plant diseases can gain a foothold and spread where they wouldn’t have survived in the past. Just like people, plants can be susceptible to illness and have trouble fighting off a new fungus or disease. This spread of disease can be devastating to a garden or wild crop, and heartbreaking to those who depend on these plants.

The rosehips are turning black. The flower will be great and beautiful, and the bush is healthy and normal-looking, and then as the hip starts to form, it either doesn’t grow and turns yellow and black, or it might actually get kind of reddish and then it will turn black. Or there’s more spots. They don’t ripen in time, and then they just turn black. – Emily Willis, Skagway


There’s a virus that’s affecting the highbush cranberry; it causes curling of the leaves and spots on them. – Emily Willis

There’s a rust-colored fungus on the raspberries that came in about two years ago that causes a darkening of the leaf and destroys their ability to bear fruit. It’s devastating to the raspberry bush. – Lynne Cameron, Skagway

Shrubification

Hiking through tall willow bushes.

NPS

The tundra environment of the Seward Peninsula around Nome is vastly different from Skagway. There are no grand trees and few vegetable gardens. Tundra vegetation is a beautiful array of low-growing, hardy plants and lichens adapted to endure harsh arctic conditions. Cold winters, strong winds, poorly drained soils, and short growing seasons shape what can survive on the tundra. Alders and willows grow out instead of up, creating a network of short, dense vegetation. Nome residents have noted recent increases in shrubs and taller growing plants.

There’s been more shrubification since the 1990s. Shrubs are marching northward as the temperature warms and they can survive in new places. – Ken Adkisson, Nome

The biggest change is the growth of willows. Because of warmer temperatures, they grow faster, longer and maintain their growth, so they are expanding out into more areas and growing taller. Willows provide food for moose, so more willows means more moose. – Roy Ashenfelter, Nome

Winners and Losers

Cladonia lichen, commonly known as reindeer moss, are an important food source for local caribou and reindeer populations.

NPS

In all ecosystems, a change in one element has ripple effects on all other parts of the system. As the temperature warms, the ground thaws and the vegetation changes. Some species win, but others aren’t so lucky. As some folks in Nome observed:

Blueberry patches are turning into willow patches. And white spruce, cottonwood (balsam popular), and quaking aspen are getting a foothold now. They are taking off because they can get their roots into the thawing ground. – Charlie Lean, Nome

Trees growing in are shading out the lichen, which is a primary food for the caribou. – Charlie Lean

I do feel like there are a lot more berries. Blueberries, cranberries, salmonberries, blackberries. But it depends on the amount of water we’ll receive from spring break-up and how much rain we receive over the summer. It does seem that it’s getting earlier and earlier in the year that people are finding ripe berries in different locations. – Jacob Martin, Nome

Effects of Vegetation Change

An aerial view of Cowpack Lagoon in Bering Land Bridge National Preserve.

NPS / Tahzay Jones

From a scientific perspective, observed vegetation changes provide clues for other environmental questions. Like what broader landscape changes could be the result of changes in surface vegetation? Or, will drier lake beds impact the nesting success of certain bird species?

Vegetation grows back very quickly in the lakes that have drained from thawing permafrost. The mud is very rich in nutrients. Lakes drained in 2018 already were completely covered with vegetation in 2019. – Dave Swanson, Fairbanks

Vegetation on the barrier islands is denser than it used to be because of the warmer climate. – Dave Swanson

If a barrier island is eroding and that erosion leads to a breach in the island, now you might start getting a change in the general current flow. If there are changes in how the water flow is moving within a lagoon, it could entirely cover the sea grass beds with sediment faster than they can grow. The loss of sea grass beds is significant because they tend to be nursery grounds for a lot of fish, and is habitat and feeding area for some of the waterfowl that are coming in. – Tahzay Jones, Anchorage

Have you noticed habitat changes where you live? Are some species winning and some species losing with these changes?

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