Changes in forest productivity across Alaska consistent with biome shift

• Published in: Ecology Letters
• Main Authors: Beck, Pieter, Juday, Glenn, Alix, Claire, Barber, Valerie, Winslow, Stephen, Sousa, Emily, Heiser, Patricia, Herriges, James, Goetz, Scott
• Other Authors: The Woods Hole Research Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), Archéologie des Amériques (ArchAm), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (UP1)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2011
• Subjects: NDVI; high latitudes; Boreal forests; remote sensing; tree rings; Arctic; drought; evergreen forests; global warming; productivity; [SHS.ARCHEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and Prehistory; Climate change; Global warming; Tundra; Alaska
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01873888; https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01598.x

International audience "Global vegetation models predict that boreal forests are particularly sensitive to a biome shift during the 21st century. This shift would manifest itself first at the biome’s margins, with evergreen forest expanding into current tundra while being replaced by grasslands or temperate forest at the biome’s southern edge. We evaluated changes in forest productivity since 1982 across boreal Alaska by linking satellite estimates of primary productivity and a large tree‐ring data set. Trends in both records show consistent growth increases at the boreal–tundra ecotones that contrast with drought‐induced productivity declines throughout interior Alaska. These patterns support the hypothesized effects of an initiating biome shift. Ultimately, tree dispersal rates, habitat availability and the rate of future climate change, and how it changes disturbance regimes, are expected to determine where the boreal biome will undergo a gradual geographic range shift, and where a more rapid decline." (source éditeur)