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  • Articles  (142)
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  • Articles  (142)
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  • 1
    Publication Date: 2013-09-21
    Description: Circumpolar expansion of tall shrubs and trees into Arctic tundra is widely thought to be occurring as a result of recent climate warming, but little quantitative evidence exists for northern Siberia, which encompasses the world's largest forest-tundra ecotonal belt. We quantified changes in tall shrub and tree canopy cover in eleven, widely-distributed Siberian ecotonal landscapes by comparing very-high-resolution photography from the Cold War-era “Gambit” and “Corona” satellite surveillance systems (1965-1969) with modern imagery. We also analyzed within-landscape patterns of vegetation change to evaluate the susceptibility of different landscape components to tall shrub and tree increase. The total cover of tall shrubs and trees increased in nine of eleven ecotones. In northwest Siberia, alder ( Alnus ) shrubland cover increased 5.3 – 25.9% in five ecotones. In Taymyr and Yakutia, larch ( Larix ) cover increased 3.0 – 6.7% within three ecotones, but declined 16.8% at a fourth ecotone due to thaw of ice-rich permafrost. In Chukotka, the total cover of alder and dwarf pine ( Pinus ) increased 6.1% within one ecotone and was little-changed at a second ecotone. Within most landscapes, shrub and tree increase was linked to specific geomorphic settings, especially those with active disturbance regimes such as permafrost patterned-ground, floodplains, and colluvial hillslopes. Mean summer temperatures increased at most ecotones since the mid-1960s, but rates of shrub and tree canopy cover expansion were not strongly correlated with temperature trends and were better correlated with mean annual precipitation. We conclude that shrub and tree cover is increasing in tundra ecotones across most of northern Siberia, but rates of increase vary widely regionally and at the landscape-scale. Our results indicate that extensive changes can occur within decades in moist, shrub-dominated ecotones, as in northwest Siberia, while changes are likely to occur much more slowly in the highly continental, larch-dominated ecotones of central and eastern Siberia. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
    Print ISSN: 1354-1013
    Electronic ISSN: 1365-2486
    Topics: Biology , Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Geography
    Published by Wiley
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  • 2
    Publication Date: 2016-01-09
    Description: Warming in the Arctic has resulted in changes in the distribution and composition of vegetation communities. Many of these changes are occurring at fine spatial scales and at the level of individual species. Broad-band, coarse-scale remote sensing methods are commonly used to assess vegetation changes in the Arctic, and may not be appropriate for detecting these fine-scale changes; however, the use of hyperspectral, high resolution data for assessing vegetation dynamics remains scarce. The aim of this paper is to assess the ability of field spectroscopy to differentiate among four vegetation communities in the Low Arctic of Alaska. Primary data were collected from the North Slope site of Ivotuk, Alaska (68.49°N, 155.74°W) and analyzed using spectrally resampled hyperspectral narrowbands (HNBs). A two-step sparse partial least squares (SPLS) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was used for community separation. Results from Ivotuk were then used to predict community membership at five other sites along the Dalton Highway in Arctic Alaska. Overall classification accuracy at Ivotuk ranged from 84%–94% and from 55%–91% for the Dalton Highway test sites. The results of this study suggest that hyperspectral data acquired at the field level, along with the SPLS and LDA methodology, can be used to successfully discriminate among Arctic tundra vegetation communities in Alaska, and present an improvement over broad-band, coarse-scale methods for community classification.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
    Published by MDPI Publishing
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  • 3
    Publication Date: 2011-05-28
    Description: Growing season soil CO2 efflux is known to vary laterally by as much as seven fold within small subalpine watersheds (
    Print ISSN: 0043-1397
    Electronic ISSN: 1944-7973
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
    Published by Wiley on behalf of American Geophysical Union (AGU).
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  • 4
    Publication Date: 2015-12-03
    Description: Permafrost and varying land surface properties greatly complicate modelling of the thermal response of Arctic soils to climate change. The forest-tundra transition near Nadym in west Siberia provides an excellent study area in which to examine the contrasting thermal properties of soils in a forested ecosystem without permafrost and peatlands with permafrost. We investigated the effects of forest shading, snow cover and variable organic soil horizons in three common ecosystems of the forest-tundra transition zone. Based on the year-round temperature profile data, the most informative annual parameters were: (1) the sum of positive average daily temperatures at depths of 10 and 20 cm; (2) the maximum penetration depth of temperatures above 10 °C; and (3) the number of days with temperatures below 0 °C at a depth of 20 cm. The insulative effect of snow cover in winter was at least twice that of the shading and cooling effect of vegetation in summer. In areas with shallow permafrost, the presence of a thick organic horizon, with an extremely low thermal diffusivity, creates a very steep temperature gradient that limits heat penetration to the top of the permafrost in summer. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
    Print ISSN: 1045-6740
    Electronic ISSN: 1099-1530
    Topics: Geography , Geosciences
    Published by Wiley
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  • 5
    Publication Date: 2015-12-09
    Description: Abandoned agricultural fields have recently become more abundant in the U.S. and remain susceptible to species invasions after cultivation disturbance. As invasive species become more widespread with increases in anthropogenic activities, we need more effective ways to use limited resources for conservation of native ecosystems. Remote sensing can help us monitor the spread and effects of invasive species, and thus determine the species and locations to target for conservation. To examine this potential, we studied plant communities dominated by exotic invasive plant species in secondary successional fields in northern Virginia using ground-level hyperspectral data. Within these communities, ordination analyses of vegetation surveys revealed differences in species compositions among plots and fields. These differences among communities were also observed in the spectral data. Stepwise multiple linear regression analyses to determine which species influenced the ordination axes revealed that many of the influential species are considered invasive, again underscoring the influence of invasive species on community properties. Stepwise regression analyses also revealed that the most influential wavelengths for discrimination were distributed along the spectral profile from the visible to the near-infrared regions. A discriminant analysis using wavelengths selected with a principal components analysis demonstrated that different plant communities were separable using spectral data. These spectrally observable differences suggest that we can use hyperspectral data to distinguish among invasive-dominated successional plant communities in this region.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
    Published by MDPI Publishing
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  • 6
    Publication Date: 2012-09-08
    Description: ABSTRACT Small patterned-ground features (PGFs) in the Arctic have unique soil properties that vary with latitude and may greatly affect tundra biogeochemistry. Because nitrogen availability can strongly limit arctic vegetation growth, we examined how soil nitrogen transformations differ between PGFs and the surrounding inter-PGF tundra along an arctic latitudinal gradient. We collected soils at eight sites from the Alaskan Low Arctic to the Canadian High Arctic. The soils were incubated for 21 days at 9 °C and 15 °C and analysed for changes in total inorganic nitrogen, nitrate and extractable organic nitrogen (EON). We found greater nitrogen immobilisation in the surrounding inter-PGF soils than in the PGF soils. Along the latitudinal gradient, differences in net nitrogen mineralisation and EON cycling between PGF and inter-PGF soils were strongly influenced by the presence of a pH boundary within the Low Arctic and the transition between the High and Low Arctic, with greater immobilisation in the nonacidic and Low Arctic sites, respectively. Incubation temperature affected EON flux but did not affect net nitrogen mineralisation or nitrification. These results show that spatial heterogeneity at several scales can influence soil nitrogen dynamics, and is therefore an important influence on arctic ecosystem function. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
    Print ISSN: 1045-6740
    Electronic ISSN: 1099-1530
    Topics: Geography , Geosciences
    Published by Wiley
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  • 7
    Publication Date: 2011-09-24
    Description: Research on the terrestrial C balance focuses largely on measuring and predicting responses of ecosystem-scale production and respiration to changing temperatures and hydrologic regimes. However, landscape morphology can modify the availability of resources from year to year by imposing physical gradients that redistribute soil water and other biophysical variables within ecosystems. This paper demonstrates that the well-established biophysical relationship between soil respiration and soil moisture interacts with topographic structure to create bidirectional (i.e., opposite) responses of soil respiration to soil water availability within the landscape. Based on soil respiration measurements taken at a subalpine forest in central Montana, we found that locations with high drainage areas (i.e., lowlands and wet areas of the forest) had higher cumulative soil respiration in dry years, whereas locations with low drainage areas (i.e., uplands and dry areas of the forest) had higher cumulative soil respiration in wet years. Our results indicate that for 80.9% of the forest soil respiration is likely to increase during wet years, whereas for 19.1% of the forest soil respiration is likely to decrease under the same hydrologic conditions. This emergent, bidirectional behavior is generated from the interaction of three relatively simple elements (parabolic soil biophysics, the relative distribution of landscape positions, and inter-annual climate variability), indicating that terrain complexity is an important mediator of the landscape-scale soil C response to climate. These results highlight that evaluating and predicting ecosystem-scale soil C response to climate fluctuation requires detailed characterization of biophysical-topographic interactions in addition to biophysical-climate interactions.
    Print ISSN: 1354-1013
    Electronic ISSN: 1365-2486
    Topics: Biology , Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Geography
    Published by Wiley
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  • 8
    Publication Date: 2017-03-02
    Description: Many ecosystems around the world are rapidly deteriorating due to both local and global pressures, and perhaps none so precipitously as coral reefs. Management of coral reefs through maintenance (e.g., marine-protected areas, catchment management to improve water quality), restoration, as well as global and national governmental agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., the 2015 Paris Agreement) is critical for the persistence of coral reefs. Despite these initiatives, the health and abundance of corals reefs are rapidly declining and other solutions will soon be required. We have recently discussed options for using assisted evolution (i.e., selective breeding, assisted gene flow, conditioning or epigenetic programming, and the manipulation of the coral microbiome) as a means to enhance environmental stress tolerance of corals and the success of coral reef restoration efforts. The 2014–2016 global coral bleaching event has sharpened the focus on such interventionist approaches. We highlight the necessity for consideration of alternative (e.g., hybrid) ecosystem states, discuss traits of resilient corals and coral reef ecosystems, and propose a decision tree for incorporating assisted evolution into restoration initiatives to enhance climate resilience of coral reefs. Many ecosystems around the world are rapidly deteriorating due to both local and global pressures including climate change, and perhaps none so precipitously as coral reefs. While root causes of human-driven climate change should be addressed, additional solutions are urgently required to ensure coral reefs persist into the future. In this Opinion piece, we address how breeding coral stock with enhanced environmental stress tolerance (assisted evolution) can increase reef resilience and contribute to the success of coral reef restoration efforts. We discuss traits of resilient corals and coral reef ecosystems, and provide guidelines for incorporating assisted evolution into restoration initiatives.
    Print ISSN: 1354-1013
    Electronic ISSN: 1365-2486
    Topics: Biology , Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Geography
    Published by Wiley
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  • 9
    Publication Date: 2017-08-08
    Description: Terrestrial ecosystem responses to temperature and precipitation have major implications for the global carbon cycle. Case studies demonstrate that complex terrain, which accounts for more than 50% of Earth's land surface, can affect ecological processes associated with land-atmosphere carbon fluxes. However, no studies have addressed the role of complex terrain in mediating ecophysiological responses of land-atmosphere carbon fluxes to climate variables. We synthesized data from AmeriFlux towers and found that for sites in complex terrain, responses of ecosystem CO 2 fluxes to temperature and precipitation are organized according to terrain slope and drainage area, variables associated with water and energy availability. Specifically, we found that for tower sites in complex terrain, mean topographic slope and drainage area surrounding the tower explained between 51% and 78% of site-to-site variation in the response of CO 2 fluxes to temperature and precipitation depending on the time scale. We found no such organization among sites in flat terrain, even though their flux responses exhibited similar ranges. These results challenge prevailing conceptual framework in terrestrial ecosystem modeling that assumes CO 2 fluxes derive from vertical soil-plant-climate interactions. We conclude that the terrain in which ecosystems are situated can also have important influences on CO 2 responses to temperature and precipitation. This work has implications for about 14% of the total land area of the conterminous US. This area is considered topographically complex and contributes to approximately 15% of gross ecosystem carbon production in the conterminous US.
    Print ISSN: 0886-6236
    Electronic ISSN: 1944-9224
    Topics: Biology , Chemistry and Pharmacology , Geography , Geosciences , Physics
    Published by Wiley on behalf of American Geophysical Union (AGU).
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  • 10
    Publication Date: 2017-03-10
    Description: Satellite remote sensing data have indicated a general ‘greening’ trend in the arctic tundra biome. However, the observed changes based on remote sensing are the result of multiple environmental drivers, and the effects of individual controls such as warming, herbivory, and other disturbances on changes in vegetation biomass, community structure, and ecosystem function remain unclear. We apply ArcVeg, an arctic tundra vegetation dynamics model, to estimate potential changes in vegetation biomass and net primary production (NPP) at the plant community and functional type levels. ArcVeg is driven by soil nitrogen output from the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model, existing densities of Rangifer populations, and projected summer temperature changes by the NCAR CCSM4.0 general circulation model across the Arctic. We quantified the changes in aboveground biomass and NPP resulting from (i) observed herbivory only; (ii) projected climate change only; and (iii) coupled effects of projected climate change and herbivory. We evaluated model outputs of the absolute and relative differences in biomass and NPP by country, bioclimate subzone, and floristic province. Estimated potential biomass increases resulting from temperature increase only are approximately 5% greater than the biomass modeled due to coupled warming and herbivory. Such potential increases are greater in areas currently occupied by large or dense Rangifer herds such as the Nenets-occupied regions in Russia (27% greater vegetation increase without herbivores). In addition, herbivory modulates shifts in plant community structure caused by warming. Plant functional types such as shrubs and mosses were affected to a greater degree than other functional types by either warming or herbivory or coupled effects of the two. Potential Arctic vegetation can be 5% more than currently estimated through satellite remote sensing. Herbivory accounts for the 5% of biomass discrepancy. Such discrepancy is more profound in regions with high intensity of herbivory.
    Print ISSN: 1354-1013
    Electronic ISSN: 1365-2486
    Topics: Biology , Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Geography
    Published by Wiley
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