Multi-Year Lags between Forest Browning and Soil Respiration at High Northern Latitudes
High-latitude northern ecosystems are experiencing rapid climate changes, and represent a large potential climate feedback because of their high soil carbon densities and shifting disturbance regimes. A significant carbon flow from these ecosystems is soil respiration (RS, the flow of carbon dioxide...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3506603 2023-05-15T15:13:38+02:00 Multi-Year Lags between Forest Browning and Soil Respiration at High Northern Latitudes Bond-Lamberty, Ben Bunn, Andrew G. Thomson, Allison M. 2012-11-26 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3506603 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23189202 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050441 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3506603 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23189202 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050441 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2012 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050441 2013-09-04T16:22:58Z High-latitude northern ecosystems are experiencing rapid climate changes, and represent a large potential climate feedback because of their high soil carbon densities and shifting disturbance regimes. A significant carbon flow from these ecosystems is soil respiration (RS, the flow of carbon dioxide, generated by plant roots and soil fauna, from the soil surface to atmosphere), and any change in the high-latitude carbon cycle might thus be reflected in RS observed in the field. This study used two variants of a machine-learning algorithm and least squares regression to examine how remotely-sensed canopy greenness (NDVI), climate, and other variables are coupled to annual RS based on 105 observations from 64 circumpolar sites in a global database. The addition of NDVI roughly doubled model performance, with the best-performing models explaining ∼62% of observed RS variability. We show that early-summer NDVI from previous years is generally the best single predictor of RS, and is better than current-year temperature or moisture. This implies significant temporal lags between these variables, with multi-year carbon pools exerting large-scale effects. Areas of decreasing RS are spatially correlated with browning boreal forests and warmer temperatures, particularly in western North America. We suggest that total circumpolar RS may have slowed by ∼5% over the last decade, depressed by forest stress and mortality, which in turn decrease RS. Arctic tundra may exhibit a significantly different response, but few data are available with which to test this. Combining large-scale remote observations and small-scale field measurements, as done here, has the potential to allow inferences about the temporal and spatial complexity of the large-scale response of northern ecosystems to changing climate. Text Arctic Tundra PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic Browning ENVELOPE(164.050,164.050,-74.617,-74.617) PLoS ONE 7 11 e50441 |
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English |
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Research Article |
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Research Article Bond-Lamberty, Ben Bunn, Andrew G. Thomson, Allison M. Multi-Year Lags between Forest Browning and Soil Respiration at High Northern Latitudes |
topic_facet |
Research Article |
description |
High-latitude northern ecosystems are experiencing rapid climate changes, and represent a large potential climate feedback because of their high soil carbon densities and shifting disturbance regimes. A significant carbon flow from these ecosystems is soil respiration (RS, the flow of carbon dioxide, generated by plant roots and soil fauna, from the soil surface to atmosphere), and any change in the high-latitude carbon cycle might thus be reflected in RS observed in the field. This study used two variants of a machine-learning algorithm and least squares regression to examine how remotely-sensed canopy greenness (NDVI), climate, and other variables are coupled to annual RS based on 105 observations from 64 circumpolar sites in a global database. The addition of NDVI roughly doubled model performance, with the best-performing models explaining ∼62% of observed RS variability. We show that early-summer NDVI from previous years is generally the best single predictor of RS, and is better than current-year temperature or moisture. This implies significant temporal lags between these variables, with multi-year carbon pools exerting large-scale effects. Areas of decreasing RS are spatially correlated with browning boreal forests and warmer temperatures, particularly in western North America. We suggest that total circumpolar RS may have slowed by ∼5% over the last decade, depressed by forest stress and mortality, which in turn decrease RS. Arctic tundra may exhibit a significantly different response, but few data are available with which to test this. Combining large-scale remote observations and small-scale field measurements, as done here, has the potential to allow inferences about the temporal and spatial complexity of the large-scale response of northern ecosystems to changing climate. |
format |
Text |
author |
Bond-Lamberty, Ben Bunn, Andrew G. Thomson, Allison M. |
author_facet |
Bond-Lamberty, Ben Bunn, Andrew G. Thomson, Allison M. |
author_sort |
Bond-Lamberty, Ben |
title |
Multi-Year Lags between Forest Browning and Soil Respiration at High Northern Latitudes |
title_short |
Multi-Year Lags between Forest Browning and Soil Respiration at High Northern Latitudes |
title_full |
Multi-Year Lags between Forest Browning and Soil Respiration at High Northern Latitudes |
title_fullStr |
Multi-Year Lags between Forest Browning and Soil Respiration at High Northern Latitudes |
title_full_unstemmed |
Multi-Year Lags between Forest Browning and Soil Respiration at High Northern Latitudes |
title_sort |
multi-year lags between forest browning and soil respiration at high northern latitudes |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2012 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3506603 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23189202 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050441 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(164.050,164.050,-74.617,-74.617) |
geographic |
Arctic Browning |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Browning |
genre |
Arctic Tundra |
genre_facet |
Arctic Tundra |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3506603 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23189202 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050441 |
op_rights |
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050441 |
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PLoS ONE |
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7 |
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e50441 |
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