Data from: Sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high Arctic ecosystem
The high Arctic is the world's fasting warming biome, allowing access to sections of previously inaccessible land for resource extraction. Starting in 2011, exploration of one of the Earth's largest undeveloped coal seams was initiated in a relatively pristine, polar desert environment in...
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ftdryad:oai:v1.datadryad.org:10255/dryad.104992 2023-05-15T14:24:48+02:00 Data from: Sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high Arctic ecosystem Becker, Michael S. Pollard, Wayne H. Arctic High Arctic Ellesmere Island Nunavut 2015-12-16T00:10:18Z http://hdl.handle.net/10255/dryad.104992 https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t0k5k unknown doi:10.5061/dryad.t0k5k/1 doi:10.5061/dryad.t0k5k/2 doi:10.1111/1365-2664.12603 doi:10.5061/dryad.t0k5k Becker MS, Pollard WH (2015) Sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high Arctic ecosystem. Journal of Applied Ecology 53: 876-884. http://hdl.handle.net/10255/dryad.104992 biodiversity disturbance ice wedges infrastructure permafrost polar desert species richness thermokarst ground temperature climate change Article 2015 ftdryad https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t0k5k https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t0k5k/1 https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t0k5k/2 https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12603 2020-01-01T15:28:42Z The high Arctic is the world's fasting warming biome, allowing access to sections of previously inaccessible land for resource extraction. Starting in 2011, exploration of one of the Earth's largest undeveloped coal seams was initiated in a relatively pristine, polar desert environment in the Canadian high Arctic. Due to the relative lack of historic anthropogenic disturbance, significant gaps in knowledge exist on how the landscape will be impacted by development. At an abandoned airstrip located near the area of current exploration, we used a disturbance case–control approach to evaluate the long-term ecological consequences of high Arctic infrastructure disturbance to vegetation and sensitive, ice-rich permafrost. We quantified: (i) long-term effects on vegetation diversity, soil nutrients, and abiotic ground conditions and (ii) the alteration of the ground surface topography and legacy of subsurface thermal changes. We found that in over sixty years since abandonment, the disturbed landscape has not recovered to initial conditions but instead reflects a disturbance-initiated succession towards a different stable-state community. Microtopography greatly influenced recovery patterns in the landscape. The terrain overlaying buried ice (ice wedge polygon troughs) was the most sensitive to disturbance and had a different species composition, decreased plot-level species richness, significant increases in vegetation cover, and a drastically reduced seasonal fluctuation in subsurface temperatures. In contrast, disturbed polygon tops showed resiliency in vegetation recovery, but still had remarkable increases of depth of seasonal soil thaw (active layer). Synthesis and applications. Our results indicate that disturbance effects differ depending on microtopographic features, leading to an increased patchiness of the landscape as found elsewhere in the Arctic. Managers who wish to lessen their impact on high Arctic environments should avoid areas of sensitive, ice-rich permafrost, constrain the geographic scale of near-surface ground disturbance, limit vegetation removal where possible and reseed disturbed areas with native species. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Arctic Climate change Ellesmere Island Ice Nunavut permafrost polar desert Thermokarst wedge* Dryad Digital Repository (Duke University) Arctic Ellesmere Island Nunavut |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Dryad Digital Repository (Duke University) |
op_collection_id |
ftdryad |
language |
unknown |
topic |
biodiversity disturbance ice wedges infrastructure permafrost polar desert species richness thermokarst ground temperature climate change |
spellingShingle |
biodiversity disturbance ice wedges infrastructure permafrost polar desert species richness thermokarst ground temperature climate change Becker, Michael S. Pollard, Wayne H. Data from: Sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high Arctic ecosystem |
topic_facet |
biodiversity disturbance ice wedges infrastructure permafrost polar desert species richness thermokarst ground temperature climate change |
description |
The high Arctic is the world's fasting warming biome, allowing access to sections of previously inaccessible land for resource extraction. Starting in 2011, exploration of one of the Earth's largest undeveloped coal seams was initiated in a relatively pristine, polar desert environment in the Canadian high Arctic. Due to the relative lack of historic anthropogenic disturbance, significant gaps in knowledge exist on how the landscape will be impacted by development. At an abandoned airstrip located near the area of current exploration, we used a disturbance case–control approach to evaluate the long-term ecological consequences of high Arctic infrastructure disturbance to vegetation and sensitive, ice-rich permafrost. We quantified: (i) long-term effects on vegetation diversity, soil nutrients, and abiotic ground conditions and (ii) the alteration of the ground surface topography and legacy of subsurface thermal changes. We found that in over sixty years since abandonment, the disturbed landscape has not recovered to initial conditions but instead reflects a disturbance-initiated succession towards a different stable-state community. Microtopography greatly influenced recovery patterns in the landscape. The terrain overlaying buried ice (ice wedge polygon troughs) was the most sensitive to disturbance and had a different species composition, decreased plot-level species richness, significant increases in vegetation cover, and a drastically reduced seasonal fluctuation in subsurface temperatures. In contrast, disturbed polygon tops showed resiliency in vegetation recovery, but still had remarkable increases of depth of seasonal soil thaw (active layer). Synthesis and applications. Our results indicate that disturbance effects differ depending on microtopographic features, leading to an increased patchiness of the landscape as found elsewhere in the Arctic. Managers who wish to lessen their impact on high Arctic environments should avoid areas of sensitive, ice-rich permafrost, constrain the geographic scale of near-surface ground disturbance, limit vegetation removal where possible and reseed disturbed areas with native species. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Becker, Michael S. Pollard, Wayne H. |
author_facet |
Becker, Michael S. Pollard, Wayne H. |
author_sort |
Becker, Michael S. |
title |
Data from: Sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high Arctic ecosystem |
title_short |
Data from: Sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high Arctic ecosystem |
title_full |
Data from: Sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high Arctic ecosystem |
title_fullStr |
Data from: Sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high Arctic ecosystem |
title_full_unstemmed |
Data from: Sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high Arctic ecosystem |
title_sort |
data from: sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high arctic ecosystem |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10255/dryad.104992 https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t0k5k |
op_coverage |
Arctic High Arctic Ellesmere Island Nunavut |
geographic |
Arctic Ellesmere Island Nunavut |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Ellesmere Island Nunavut |
genre |
Arctic Arctic Climate change Ellesmere Island Ice Nunavut permafrost polar desert Thermokarst wedge* |
genre_facet |
Arctic Arctic Climate change Ellesmere Island Ice Nunavut permafrost polar desert Thermokarst wedge* |
op_relation |
doi:10.5061/dryad.t0k5k/1 doi:10.5061/dryad.t0k5k/2 doi:10.1111/1365-2664.12603 doi:10.5061/dryad.t0k5k Becker MS, Pollard WH (2015) Sixty-year legacy of human impacts on a high Arctic ecosystem. Journal of Applied Ecology 53: 876-884. http://hdl.handle.net/10255/dryad.104992 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t0k5k https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t0k5k/1 https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t0k5k/2 https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12603 |
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