Tuesday 24th April 2018

18:30 hrs                         Pre-Registration/pub gathering @ ‘The City Walls’

Location:   Back Walk, Stirling, FK8 2QA; citywalls-stirling.co.uk https://goo.gl/maps/YU8UcfZ3Q8L2

Wednesday 25th April 2018

Location:                  University of Stirling, Stirling Court Hotel, Hermitage Iona Room

09:00 – 09:15          Welcome!

09:15 – 10:30          Plenary Session I – Rates of Change and Whole-Ecosystem Processes [Chair: Ellen Dorrepaal; Co-chair: Greg Henry]

Gaius (Gus) R. Shaver – “Forty years of change in composition and structure of monitored and manipulated Alaskan tundra ecosystems”

Ingibjörg (Inga Svala) S. Jónsdóttir – “Simulated climate warming: The unexpected resilience of island tundra plant communities”

Kari Klanderud – “Transplants, OTCs and gradient studies: different approaches ask different questions in climate change effects studies”

Christian Rixen – “Hearing the grass grow: Vegetation records at automatic climate stations”

Elisabeth J. Cooper – “Snow manipulation on Svalbard since 2006- what have we learnt?”

10:30 – 11:00          Break

11:00 – 12:30          Plenary Session II – Rates of Change and Whole-Ecosystem Processes [Cont.] [Chair: Isla Myers-Smith; Co-Chair: Sandra Angers-Blondin]

Gergana N. Daskalova – “Eighteen years of ecological monitoring reveals multiple lines of evidence for tundra vegetation change”

Jacob A. Harris – “Changes in Vegetation Cover Across the Landscape Over Time at Atqasuk and Utqiavik, Alaska”

Signe Lett – “Mosses mediate climate-change effects on tree seedlings at the alpine treeline”

Jørn Olav Løkken – “Disentangling alpine vegetation response to warming and herbivory”

Jeremy May – “Effects of warming on growth rates and remotely-sensed normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) values across eight ITEX sites in northern Alaska”

Johan Olofsson – “Effect of herbivores on species richness in a changing climate”

12:30 – 14:00          Lunch (and poster preview)

14:00 – 15:30          Plenary Session III - Plant Functional Traits / "functional diversity change" [Chair: Anne Bjorkman; Co-Chair: Zoe Panchen]

Per Mølgaard – “Climate change brings the greedy moth Eurois occulta to Disko”

Robert G. Björk – “Implications of evergreen shrub advancement: The need for a more comprehensive view of Arctic shrubification”

Sonja Wipf – “Faster, taller, more – patterns and drivers of change in arctic and high-alpine plant communities”

Anne D. Bjorkman – “Species and functional diversity change over three decades of tundra monitoring”

Ellen Dorrepaal – “Winter climate-change effects on tundra bryophytes”

Ned Fetcher – “Ecotypic variation in Eriophorum vaginatum: physiology and genetics”

15:30 – 16:00          Afternoon Tea

16:00 – 16:45          Plenary Session III - Plant Functional Traits / "functional diversity change" [Cont.] [Chair: Kari Klanderud; Co-Chair: Signe Lett]

Katlyn Betway – “Exploring Plant Traits as Predictors of Changes in Vegetation Cover”

Haydn J.D. Thomas – “Tundra vegetation change has no net impact on tundra litter decomposition rates”

Francesca Jaroszynska – “Plant functional groups regulate ecosystem properties in semi-natural alpine grasslands”

17:00 – 17:15          Plenary Introduction and Planning of Parallel Sessions & Workshops

17:15 – 17:30          Poster overviews

17:30-18:30              Continuing poster discussions

Thursday 26th April 2018

Location University of Stirling, Cottrell Building, Plenary Room Lecture Theatre A5 (break-out rooms to be advised prior to sessions); Teas/Coffees in 2B85.

09:00 – 10:30          Plenary Session IV – Tundra Data Synthesis [Chair: Bob Hollister; Co-Chair: Friederike Gehrmann] 

Isla Myers-Smith – “ITEX syntheses: Attribution of ecological change to warming across the tundra biome”

Janet S. Prevéy – “The ITEX phenology database: Recent syntheses and future directions”

Ruud Scharn – “A note on phylogenetic community structure in the Arctic”

Craig Tweedie – “Multi-Scale Analysis of Vegetation Phenological Variability on the North Slope of Alaska”

Sara Hallin – “Microbial communities are not linked to vegetation changes induced by long-term warming across the Arctic”

Alejandro Salazar – “Consistent responses of soil nitrogen to experimental warming across cold ecosystems: A meta-analysis”

10:30 – 11:00          Break

11:00 – 12:15          Plenary – Soil and Rhizosphere Processes and Microbial Community Analysis [Chair: Sara Hallin; Co-Chair: Tom Parker]

Mats P. Björkman – “The sensitivity of carbon in Arctic permafrost soils to climate change”

Karina E. Clemmensen – “Arctic tree expansion leads to more efficient N cycling due to changed mycorrhizal functioning”

Mathilde Jeanbille – “Co-occurrence networks show response of microbial communities to warming in tundra soils”

Jaanis Juhanson – “Different responses of soil microbial communities to long-term experimental warming in northern Sweden”

Thomas Parker – “Soil respiration from sub-arctic tree and shrub communities is driven by recent photosynthate”

12:15 – 13:30          Lunch/walk (foraging on campus)!

13:30 – 14:30          Plenary – Phenology  [Chair: Janet S. Prevéy; Co-Chair: Jakob Assman]

Sandra Angers-Blondin – “Warmer, longer, greener? The role of increased growing season length on shrub growth”

Jacob Assman – “Snow-melt and temperature - but not sea-ice - explain variation in tundra spring plant phenology at coastal ITEX sites”

Friederike Gehrmann – “Differential responses of Arctic plant senescence to snow depth and autumn warming”

Zoe A. Panchen – “Are Arctic plant phenological responses to temperature evolutionarily conserved or related to life history traits?”

14:30 – 16:30          Discussion Session – ‘Out with the old and in with the new’ [emerging and future approaches, but also how to plan for closing down sites] [Chair: Esther R. Frei; Co-Chair: Siri Lie Olsen]

Jeffrey Kerby – “Floating the idea of ITEX drones protocols: From the Yukon Coast to the circum-Arctic”

Petr Macek – “Nurse effect of cushion plants: Plant interactions in Arctic tundra ecosystems in the face of climate change”

Christian Rixen – “The local species pool: How much does our measured vegetation change depend on the potential colonizers at our sites?”

Siri Lie Olsen – “INCLINE: Indirect climate change impacts on alpine plant communities”

Esther R. Frei – “It’s not the end: How to close down an ITEX site”

Greg H. R. Henry – “Planning for the inevitable loss of long-term sites: Alexandra Fiord”

16:30 – 17:15          All [Discussion] – “Next steps – Development of protocols for the ITEX Manual?”

18:30  for 19.00      Conference Dinner and Ceilidh (with Live Folk Music from the Riverside Ceilidh Band), Golden Lion Hotel, 8-10 King Street, Stirling FK8 1BD; https://www.thegoldenlionstirling.com/

Award of Poster and Presentation Prizes

Friday 27th April 2018

Location University of Stirling, Cottrell Building, Plenary Room Lecture Theatre A5 (break-out rooms to be advised prior to sessions); Teas/Coffees in 2B85.

09.15 - 10.00           ITEX network, discussions in plenum (chairs: Bob Hollister and Kari Klanderud)

10.00 - 12.00           Parallel Workshops incl. coffee (available from 10.30)

12.00 - 13.00           Reporting from the workshops (15 min per group); next steps [documents arising to be posted on the ITEX website in due course]

13.00 – 14.00          Close

Saturday 28th April 2018

Excursion to Ben Lawers National Nature Reserve.

Host: Philip Wookey
Steering Group: Philip Wookey, Isla Myers-Smith, Anne Bjorkman, Tom Parker, Kari Klanderud, Robert Hollister

Travel Information

Information on getting to/from Stirling University (and Stirling) can be found here:
https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/getting-here/

Make sure to follow the Stirling Campus (not Highland Campus); if you scroll down you will find a clickable link to various modes of transport, too.

If you are arriving by air, there are public transport links from both Edinburgh (EDI) and Glasgow (GLA) airports.

The following were recommended and can be booked via booking.com, or other online sites

Stirling doesn’t have any large international chain hotels, apart from Holiday Inn Express, but this is out on the ring road and not suitable if you don’t have a vehicle. If several people want to stay together there are quite a few options for self-catering apartments. There are also many B&Bs – too many to list – but this form of accommodation is common in Scotland, and can be good value. In terms of hotels, the following all have a good reputation. I also list Stirling Youth Hostel, which could be a good option for people wanting to stay together on a limited budget (there are bunk/shared rooms and dormitories). The small town of Bridge of Allan, which is slightly closer to the University than Stirling itself, and easy walking distance, also has several B&Bs as well as the Royal Hotel.

• The Golden Lion Hotel, Stirling [central hotel, and also the venue for the conference dinner and dance; Regular bus service (‘Unilink’) to the University]
• Stirling Highland Hotel, Stirling [central hotel; Regular bus service (‘Unilink’) to the University]
• Hotel Colessio, Stirling [central hotel; Regular bus service (‘Unilink’) to the University]
• Cook’s of Stirling [central hotel; Regular bus service (‘Unilink’) to the University from the Bus Station]
• Stirling Youth Hostel [central location, shared/bunk rooms/dormitories; budget, but good value accommodation]
• The Royal Hotel, Bridge of Allan [walking distance from the University]
• Dunblane Hydro Hotel (Doubletree, by Hilton), Dunblane [one would need to take bus or taxi to the University from here as Dunblane is a separate community about 5 km from the University]