Category: news

NordBorN PhD student Katrín Björnsdóttir will defend her PhD thesis ‘Consequences of climate change for ecosystem functioning mediated by plant responses across the tundra‘ at the University of Gothenburg this on Friday 2 October, 10:00–13:00 CEST.

The focus of Katrin’s research has been how climate warming is reshaping tundra plant communities and the consequences of these changes for ecosystem functioning. One of the main findings reveal that changes in plant communities can influence processes such as decomposition, with potential consequences for carbon cycling across the tundra. Her main supervisor is Anne Bjorkman, with Robert Björk from The Department of Earth Sciences as co-supervisor.

The defence in Gothenburg and can also be followed online via Zoom. We wish Katrín good luck!

More information and Zoom link

Arthur started his PhD in April at the Agricultural University of Iceland. He holds a MSc degree in alpine ecology from the Savoie Mont-Blanc University in France. Since completing his master’s thesis at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in 2024, Arthur has been involved in different projects about the effects of Arctic climate change on herbivore diet quality, mainly in Greenland and Svalbard. Arthur’s PhD project is framed within the TUNDRAdiet project, funded by the Icelandic Research Fund. The PhD project aims to investigate the diet composition and quality of large Arctic herbivores in Iceland and Greenland (reindeer/caribou, muskox and sheep). One of the goals is to compare different methods to develop tools to assess different aspects of herbivore diets in tundra ecosystems. Additionally, the project will anticipate how the increasingly frequent winter rain-on-snow events affect diet quality of Arctic herbivores. The findings will help inform management advice on how reindeer, muskox and sheep partition resources in a shared landscape and how this can be altered by climate change.