A Recipe for Plant Diversity in Subarctic Alaska

Abstract

Hungry for a little plant diversity? Let us mix some up! First, we gather available ingredients—a bit of soil, a few nutrients, and a selection of nearby plants. Then, we add them together, pour them onto a landscape and let our concoction sit. Sound easy enough? But wait… was that soil we used too acidic? Did we add enough liquid? Was our landscape flat or tilted? How can we adjust our recipe to grow the most plant species in one place? As plant ecologists, we travel to remote places in subarctic Alaska to look at which species grow there. At each place, we record the condition of the environment and tally the number of plant species we find. Over 1,000’s of visits, we now have a pretty good recipe for cooking up plant diversity! By learning about where plant diversity is high now, we can help protect it into the future.