Wilkes gets part of $1.1 million grant for climate change study

WILKES-BARRE — Wilkes University has nabbed part of a $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation for a study on the effects of climate change on plants.

The study will look at the effects on plants growing in the Alaskan tundra ecosystems: tussock cottongrass, dwarf birch and tealeaf willow.

The project is titled “Collaborative Research: Plant phenology, local adaptation, and growing season length in the changing Arctic tundra.”

Wilkes Institute for Environmental Science and Sustainability Coordinator Ned Fletcher is co-principal investigator.

Fletcher’s share of the $1.1 million is $456,716. He will be working with co-investigators Jianwu Tang and Gaius R. Shaver of the Ecosystem Center of the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., and principal investigator Michael Moody of the University of Texas at El Paso.

The project provides an unusual opportunity for some Wilkes undergraduates who will participate as field assistants “spending up to 10 weeks during the summer at the Toolik Lake Field Station, 170 miles north of the Arctic Circle,” according to a media release.

“Studying the impact of climate change has never been more critical,” Wilkes President Greg Cant said in the release. “I am so proud of Dr. Fetcher and all our faculty researchers in the College of Science and Engineering for tackling the most pressing issues of our day while providing Wilkes students with incredible hands-on learning opportunities,” Cant also thanked U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Moosic) and U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-Scranton) and Pat Toomey (R-Lehigh Valley) for their support of Wilkes.

According to the release, the project “will investigate the effect of local adaptation on the phenology of tussock cottongrass and two of its competitors, the dwarf birch and tealeaf willow. The hypothesis is that temperature, light and genetics, in different combinations, are responsible for differences in phenology in the Arctic.”

The study could have a “broad impact on science beyond the direct research results for Arctic ecosystems. Patterns observed in the Arctic are expected to appear later in other ecosystems – so the findings of this project may serve as an indicator of the potential effects of local adaptation on plant responses to climate change.”

“Changes in day length are responsible for many phenological events in the temperate zone,” Fletcher said in the release. “This research will help us to understand how phenology is controlled in a region where day length is 24 hours.”