Does tall vegetation warm or cool the ground surface? Constraining the ground thermal impacts of upright vegetation in northern environments
Abstract Increased upright vegetation growth (i.e. trees and shrubs) in northern environments can profoundly impact ground surface thermal conditions through winter warming (e.g. enhanced snow trapping) and summer cooling (e.g. increased shading). The debate over these opposite effects emphasizes th...
Published in: | Environmental Research Letters |
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31/pdf |
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crioppubl:10.1088/1748-9326/abef31 2024-06-02T08:13:07+00:00 Does tall vegetation warm or cool the ground surface? Constraining the ground thermal impacts of upright vegetation in northern environments Way, R G Lapalme, C M Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada W. Garfield Weston Foundation ArcticNet 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31/pdf unknown IOP Publishing http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://iopscience.iop.org/info/page/text-and-data-mining Environmental Research Letters volume 16, issue 5, page 054077 ISSN 1748-9326 journal-article 2021 crioppubl https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31 2024-05-07T14:00:06Z Abstract Increased upright vegetation growth (i.e. trees and shrubs) in northern environments can profoundly impact ground surface thermal conditions through winter warming (e.g. enhanced snow trapping) and summer cooling (e.g. increased shading). The debate over these opposite effects emphasizes the need to better constrain net temperature impacts of upright vegetation on soils in northern environments. We generate a series of simulations with a widely-used permafrost model to partition the absolute warming and cooling impacts of upright vegetation on ground surface temperatures for a variety of shading scenarios, climates and surficial materials types (i.e. bedrock, mineral and organic soils). These scenarios simulate annual temperature differences between the air and ground surface caused by upright vegetation to provide likely ranges for the net effects induced by vegetation. These simulations showed that ground surface temperature warming in the winter mostly overwhelmed ground surface cooling in the thawing season even when simulations included extreme shading effects. Constraining the simulations to current best estimates of the possible summer cooling impact of vegetation yielded a dominant winter warming signal for most snow depths and climate types. Differences in the magnitude of air-surface temperature offsets between sites underlain by bedrock, mineral and organic soil highlights the importance of considering differences in unfrozen moisture content in areas where the ground freezes and thaws seasonally. The results of this study suggest that the net ground surface temperature impacts of increased snow trapping by vegetation will far exceed cooling caused by enhanced shading following increases in tall vegetation in most northern environments. Article in Journal/Newspaper permafrost IOP Publishing Environmental Research Letters 16 5 054077 |
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Abstract Increased upright vegetation growth (i.e. trees and shrubs) in northern environments can profoundly impact ground surface thermal conditions through winter warming (e.g. enhanced snow trapping) and summer cooling (e.g. increased shading). The debate over these opposite effects emphasizes the need to better constrain net temperature impacts of upright vegetation on soils in northern environments. We generate a series of simulations with a widely-used permafrost model to partition the absolute warming and cooling impacts of upright vegetation on ground surface temperatures for a variety of shading scenarios, climates and surficial materials types (i.e. bedrock, mineral and organic soils). These scenarios simulate annual temperature differences between the air and ground surface caused by upright vegetation to provide likely ranges for the net effects induced by vegetation. These simulations showed that ground surface temperature warming in the winter mostly overwhelmed ground surface cooling in the thawing season even when simulations included extreme shading effects. Constraining the simulations to current best estimates of the possible summer cooling impact of vegetation yielded a dominant winter warming signal for most snow depths and climate types. Differences in the magnitude of air-surface temperature offsets between sites underlain by bedrock, mineral and organic soil highlights the importance of considering differences in unfrozen moisture content in areas where the ground freezes and thaws seasonally. The results of this study suggest that the net ground surface temperature impacts of increased snow trapping by vegetation will far exceed cooling caused by enhanced shading following increases in tall vegetation in most northern environments. |
author2 |
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada W. Garfield Weston Foundation ArcticNet |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Way, R G Lapalme, C M |
spellingShingle |
Way, R G Lapalme, C M Does tall vegetation warm or cool the ground surface? Constraining the ground thermal impacts of upright vegetation in northern environments |
author_facet |
Way, R G Lapalme, C M |
author_sort |
Way, R G |
title |
Does tall vegetation warm or cool the ground surface? Constraining the ground thermal impacts of upright vegetation in northern environments |
title_short |
Does tall vegetation warm or cool the ground surface? Constraining the ground thermal impacts of upright vegetation in northern environments |
title_full |
Does tall vegetation warm or cool the ground surface? Constraining the ground thermal impacts of upright vegetation in northern environments |
title_fullStr |
Does tall vegetation warm or cool the ground surface? Constraining the ground thermal impacts of upright vegetation in northern environments |
title_full_unstemmed |
Does tall vegetation warm or cool the ground surface? Constraining the ground thermal impacts of upright vegetation in northern environments |
title_sort |
does tall vegetation warm or cool the ground surface? constraining the ground thermal impacts of upright vegetation in northern environments |
publisher |
IOP Publishing |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31/pdf |
genre |
permafrost |
genre_facet |
permafrost |
op_source |
Environmental Research Letters volume 16, issue 5, page 054077 ISSN 1748-9326 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://iopscience.iop.org/info/page/text-and-data-mining |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abef31 |
container_title |
Environmental Research Letters |
container_volume |
16 |
container_issue |
5 |
container_start_page |
054077 |
_version_ |
1800759777920286720 |