Seasonal Sources of Plant Water Uptake and Soil Evaporation Dynamics Across a Boreal Forest‐Shrub Taiga Gradient

ABSTRACT As high latitudes warm, there is limited knowledge of how rapidly changing species composition and density, combined with shifting precipitation and thawing permafrost, will affect critical zone water fluxes across the subarctic. Here, we use stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen to assess the role of soil moisture, precipitation dynamics and plant species on the timing, magnitude and sources of plant water uptake at three sites along an elevational gradient in a subarctic, alpine catchment in southern Yukon, Canada. The sites ranged from a low‐elevation boreal forest to higher elevation shrub taiga with variable shrub cover. We sampled soil and xylem water approximately every 3 weeks from pre‐leaf out to post‐senescence over two hydrologically distinct years. We answer the questions: (1) What are the seasonal and interannual changes in the isotopic composition of soil and xylem water across this range of subarctic vegetation covers?, (2) How does the seasonal origin of xylem water vary in wet and dry conditions? and (3) Do different shrub species at the same location rely on different sources of water? Results showed that while δ 2 H and δ 18 O of volume weighted precipitation became more negative with elevation, the opposite was true of xylem water. Despite less snowfall at lower elevations, plant water uptake was more reflective of snow water at the forest than at the high elevation shrub sites. Near‐surface bulk soil water had lower line‐conditioned excess at the forest than at the shrub sites throughout the season and with depth, highlighting increased contributions from soil evaporation at the forest. Differences in annual precipitation and climate had a strong influence on stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in the soil. These results demonstrate that vegetation type and elevation strongly mediate plant water sourcing and evaporative partitioning in subarctic catchments, underscoring the need to account for species‐specific and landscape‐scale variability when predicting blue/green water fluxes in a changing climate.