While root trait research has received increasing attention over the past two decades, the relationship between root traits and environmental factors remains elusive. At the same time, knowledge about these relationships is necessary if we are to understand plant community responses to environmental change. Here, we assessed the relationships between elevation (i.e., temperature) and fine root traits of plant species and communities. We focused on the sub-arctic tundra where plant communities are expected to experience extreme environmental change by the end of the century.

There are missing values for some chemical traits in the trait dataset, denoted by "n/a" and for the vegetation pinpointing data absent of hits in a plot was denoted as "null".