Temperature and soil nutrients are key factors limiting plant growth in the Swedish subarctic tundra, and rising temperatures associated with global climate change are thus predicted to have major impacts on tundra ecosystem functioning. Elevational gradients provide excellent opportunities to study how changes in temperature and associated climatic factors that shift with elevation influence community and ecosystem properties, and the processes that govern nutrient availability for plants. In collaboration with researchers here and at the Climate Impacts Research Centre (CIRC), Department of  Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, I study the effect of elevation on soil nutrient availability, plant and soil microbial communities, and plant-soil linkages in subarctic tundra. For this research, we use an elevational gradient situated near the town of Abisko in the northermost part of Sweden. 

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Education

Ph.D. (2012) Faculty of Forest Sciences, SLU, Sweden.
M.S. (2006) University of Gothenburg, Sweden.


Publications

Sundqvist MK, Sanders NJ, and Wardle DA. (2013) Community and ecosystem responses to elevational gradients: processes, mechanisms and insights for global change. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics (in press).

Kardol P, De Long JR and Sundqvist MK. (2012) Crossing the threshold: the power of multi-level experiments in identifying global change responses. New Phytologist, 196:323-326.

Sundqvist MK, Wardle DA, Olofsson E, Giesler R and Gundale MJ. (2012) Chemical properties of plant litter in response to elevation: subarctic vegetation challenges phenolic allocation theories. Functional Ecology, 26:1090-1099.

Sundqvist MK, Giesler R and Wardle DA. (2011) Within- and across-species responses of plant traits and litter decomposition to elevation across contrasting vegetation types in subarctic tundra. PLoS ONE 6(10): e27056. 

Sundqvist MK, Giesler R, Graae BJ, Wallander H, Fogelberg E and Wardle DA. (2011) Interactive effects of vegetation type and elevation on aboveground and belowground properties in a subarctic tundra. Oikos 120: 128-142. 

Sundqvist MK, Björk R and Molau U. (2008) Establishment of boreal forest species in alpine dwarf-shrub heath in subarctic Sweden. Plant Ecology & Diversity 1:67-75.