Divergent shrub-cover responses driven by climate, wildfire, and permafrost interactions in Arctic tundra ecosystems.

Global Change Biology
Yaping ChenMark J Lara

Abstract

The expansion of shrubs across the Arctic tundra may fundamentally modify land-atmosphere interactions. However, it remains unclear how shrub expansion pattern is linked with key environmental drivers, such as climate change and fire disturbance. Here we used 40+ years of high-resolution (~1.0 m) aerial and satellite imagery to estimate shrub-cover change in 114 study sites across four burned and unburned upland (ice-poor) and lowland (ice-rich) tundra ecosystems in northern Alaska. Validated with data from four additional upland and lowland tundra fires, our results reveal that summer precipitation was the most important climatic driver (r = 0.67, p < 0.001), responsible for 30.8% of shrub expansion in the upland tundra between 1971 and 2016. Shrub expansion in the uplands was largely enhanced by wildfire (p < 0.001) and it exhibited positive correlation with fire severity (r = 0.83, p < 0.001). Three decades after fire disturbance, the upland shrub cover increased by 1077.2 ± 83.6 m2  ha-1 , ~7 times the amount identified in adjacent unburned upland tundra (155.1 ± 55.4 m2  ha-1 ). In contrast, shrub cover markedly decreased in lowland tundra after fire disturbance, which triggered thermokarst-associated water impounding and ...Continue Reading

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Citations

Aug 20, 2021·Global Change Biology·Yating ChenXiao Cheng

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