TY - JOUR
T1 - Summer warming explains widespread but not uniform greening in the Arctic tundra biome
AU - Berner, Logan T.
AU - Massey, Richard
AU - Jantz, Patrick
AU - Forbes, Bruce C.
AU - Macias-Fauria, Marc
AU - Myers-Smith, Isla
AU - Kumpula, Timo
AU - Gauthier, Gilles
AU - Andreu-Hayles, Laia
AU - Gaglioti, Benjamin V.
AU - Burns, Patrick
AU - Zetterberg, Pentti
AU - D’Arrigo, Rosanne
AU - Goetz, Scott J.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) grants NNX17AE44G and 80NSSC19M0112 to S.J.G., NASA Carbon Cycle Science grant NNX17AE13G to S.J.G, and National Science Foundation (NSF) Arctic Natural Sciences grant 1661723 to R.D’A., L.A.-H., and S.J.G. Additional support provided by NSF Partnerships for International Research and Education grant 1743738 and NSF Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences grant 1502150 to R.D’A. B.C.F. was supported by the Academy of Finland (grant 256991), the Joint Program Initiative Climate (grant 291581), and the European Commission Research and Innovation Action (grant 869471). T.K. was supported by the Academy of Finland (grant 330319). M.M.-F. and I.M.-S. acknowledge support from the United Kingdom National Environmental Research Council (grants NE/L011859/1 and NE/M016323/1, respectively). B.V.G. was supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (grant 16-1-01-8). L.A.-H. acknowledges support from NSF Polar Programs (grant 15-04134) and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Climate Center. G.G. acknowledges support from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the network of center of excellence ArcticNet, and the Polar Continental Shelf Program. Landsat Surface Reflectance products were provided courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. This work used eddy covariance data acquired and shared by the FLUXNET community, with additional eddy covariance data provided by the Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, based on the work supported by the National Science Foundation (grant 1107892). Computational analyses were run on Northern Arizona University’s Monsoon computing cluster, funded by Arizona’s Technology and Research Initiative Fund.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
PY - 2020/12/1
Y1 - 2020/12/1
N2 - Arctic warming can influence tundra ecosystem function with consequences for climate feedbacks, wildlife and human communities. Yet ecological change across the Arctic tundra biome remains poorly quantified due to field measurement limitations and reliance on coarse-resolution satellite data. Here, we assess decadal changes in Arctic tundra greenness using time series from the 30 m resolution Landsat satellites. From 1985 to 2016 tundra greenness increased (greening) at ~37.3% of sampling sites and decreased (browning) at ~4.7% of sampling sites. Greening occurred most often at warm sampling sites with increased summer air temperature, soil temperature, and soil moisture, while browning occurred most often at cold sampling sites that cooled and dried. Tundra greenness was positively correlated with graminoid, shrub, and ecosystem productivity measured at field sites. Our results support the hypothesis that summer warming stimulated plant productivity across much, but not all, of the Arctic tundra biome during recent decades.
AB - Arctic warming can influence tundra ecosystem function with consequences for climate feedbacks, wildlife and human communities. Yet ecological change across the Arctic tundra biome remains poorly quantified due to field measurement limitations and reliance on coarse-resolution satellite data. Here, we assess decadal changes in Arctic tundra greenness using time series from the 30 m resolution Landsat satellites. From 1985 to 2016 tundra greenness increased (greening) at ~37.3% of sampling sites and decreased (browning) at ~4.7% of sampling sites. Greening occurred most often at warm sampling sites with increased summer air temperature, soil temperature, and soil moisture, while browning occurred most often at cold sampling sites that cooled and dried. Tundra greenness was positively correlated with graminoid, shrub, and ecosystem productivity measured at field sites. Our results support the hypothesis that summer warming stimulated plant productivity across much, but not all, of the Arctic tundra biome during recent decades.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-020-18479-5
DO - 10.1038/s41467-020-18479-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 32963240
AN - SCOPUS:85091317949
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 11
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 4621
ER -