Greening responses to long-term experimental warming in High Arctic tundra communities using plot-level remote sensing ...

• Main Author: Agger, Sofie
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2022
• Subjects: Arctic; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0416402; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0416402

Alongside significant climate warming, a widespread 30-year greening trend has been observed in high northern latitudes. Indicative of increases in vegetation productivity and biomass accumulation, this trend has been associated with shifts in phenology, longer growing seasons, and shrub expansion. Vegetation changes, which can drive feedbacks that can both amplify and dampen warming, have thus been monitored across the tundra biome to better understand the underlying controls, consequences, and future dynamics. Recent studies have shown considerable variability in patterns of warming-induced vegetation change, but efforts remain hindered by the logistical difficulties and spatiotemporal insufficiencies of common monitoring methods. We extracted the Greenness Excess Index (GEI) from a ten-year archive of digital photographs of plots in a set of long-term warming experiments in five High Arctic tundra plant communities. We determined the phenological patterns of greenness and response to warming treatments ...