Five years of winter climate change-related research in the Canadian low Arctic: What have we learned?

• Published in: Nature Precedings
• Main Authors: Grogan, Paul, Buckeridge, Kate
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2009
• Subjects: Psychiatry and Mental health; Arctic; Canada; Daring Lake; Yellowknife; Climate change; Tundra
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npre.2009.3665.1; http://www.nature.com/articles/npre.2009.3665.1.pdf; http://www.nature.com/articles/npre.2009.3665.1

Abstract The importance of the fall, winter and spring periods to ecosystem functioning and biogeochemical cycling in tundra has only become apparent in the past two decades. Our research group has been conducting winter climate change-related studies at a low arctic tundra site near Daring Lake, north of Yellowknife in northern Canada for the past five years. Most of these studies have focused on the biogeochemical interactions between plants, soils, and soil microbes during fall, winter and spring, and on their responses to experimentally deepened snow. In addition, we have measured trace gas production and isotopic nitrogen tracer distributions among plant and soil components in several vegetation-types. The central goal has been to understand the potential importance of cold season soil N transformation processes to ecosystem-level biogeochemistry during the subsequent plant growing season, and then to develop predictions of how changes in winter climate may impact these seasonal processes. In this talk, I will present a synthesis of those studies, emphasizing temperature-moisture interactions, and highlighting future research priorities.