Soil properties as constraints to seedling regeneration beyond alpine treelines in the Canadian Rocky Mountains
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Plants growing at the edges of their range limits are expected to be particularly sensitive to changes in precipitation and temperature regimes associated with climatic change. However, non-climatic factors are increasingly recognized as important constraints to species’ range expansions. Therefore, we assessed the effects of soil provenance with respect to the alpine treeline on the germination, growth, and survival of Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii) seedlings. Seedlings were grown under controlled conditions in a growth chamber and greenhouse for ninety days in soils collected from four treeline ecotones in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. By controlling seed source and climatic conditions, and eliminating competition and predation, we attribute differences in seedling viability to soil properties that differed across elevation zones and individual treeline sites. Overall, alpine soils originating from beyond the species’ current elevational range were least amenable to growth, and there was some indication of reduced germination and survival in high-elevation soils. Forest soils, which were coarser and more nutrient rich, hosted seedlings with greater above- and below-ground biomass. Thus, the physical and chemical characteristics of alpine soils in our study region may constrain future treeline expansion, underscoring the importance of incorporating soil properties when considering species’ distributions under climate change.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".