International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) data at UCAR/JOSS/NOAA/CODIAC

The International Tundra Experiment, ITEX, was established in 1990 as
a MAB-NSN initiative (Man-And-the-Biosphere, Northern Sciences
Network). Since then the programme has grown rapidly and is today one
of the most active international field programmes in arctic
ecology. The purpose of ITEX is to monitor the performance of plant
species and communities on a circumpolar basis in undisturbed habitats
with and without environmental manipulations. At present, there are
over twenty active ITEX field sites throughout the circumpolar Arctic
and in some alpine areas, operated by field parties from thirteen
countries. The basic experiment is a temperature enhancement
manipulation, where the field mean surface temperature is increased by
2-3 degrees C to simulate the climate at the middle of the next
century according to the forecast from the GCMs (General Circulation
Models). Most of the results generated within ITEX so far relate to
the response of single species, but from the field season of 1995 the
experimentation was scaled up to include community-level
responses. There are also ITEX research efforts dealing with plant
phenotypic plasticity and quantitative genetics of some of the target
species.