Arctic Plant Responses to Climate Change: From Seed Resilience to Vegetation Monitoring

Arctic ecosystems are undergoing rapid climate warming, driving shifts in environmental conditions that directly influence plant survival, reproduction, and community composition. Understanding plant responses across biological scales—from seed physiology to landscape-level vegetation change—is critical for predicting ecosystem resilience and supporting informed conservation actions. This presentation synthesizes two complementary studies that address these challenges within the context of Arctic biodiversity.

The first study investigates seed viability and freezing tolerance in seven Arctic species—Bistorta vivipara, Cerastium arcticum, Eriophorum scheuchzeri, Oxyria digyna, Saxifraga cespitosa, Silene acaulis, and Silene uralensis—collected from Svalbard. Seeds were exposed to temperatures from −50°C to 25°C under contrasting moisture conditions simulating mid-winter and early-spring environments. Imbibed (moisture-saturated) seeds exhibited substantially higher freezing susceptibility, with lethal temperature thresholds (LT50) between −15°C and −25°C. Notably, Bistorta vivipara and Silene acaulis maintained >50% germination across all tested treatments, indicating exceptional freezing tolerance and suggesting these species may gain a competitive advantage as snow regimes shift.

The second study advances remote-sensing tools to monitor Arctic vegetation dynamics at broader spatial scales. Ground-based hyperspectral imagery from Adventdalen Valley, Svalbard, was used to classify dominant plant species and construct high-resolution spectral libraries. A one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D-CNN) classifier achieved >98% accuracy, outperforming random forest and support vector machine approaches. The resulting spectral library provides a critical foundation for tracking vegetation change and scaling ground observations to larger Arctic landscapes. This integrated framework strengthens our capacity to link fine-scale plant traits with ecosystem-level change across rapidly warming Arctic regions.

Together, these studies demonstrate that Arctic plant responses to climate change operate through both physiological mechanisms and community-level transitions. While altered snowpack conditions can threaten seed viability, highly frost-tolerant species may be poised to expand under future climates. At the same time, advanced remote-sensing techniques offer powerful tools for detecting and interpreting vegetation shifts in real time. Integrating these approaches enhances our ability to understand, monitor, and ultimately care for Arctic biodiversity amid accelerating environmental change.