Earth’s Northern Landscapes Are Changing Rapidly
According to a new study published in Nature Communications, scientists found Earth’s northern landscapes are changing due to warm summer of Arctic. The region has become greener, as warmer air and soil temperatures lead to increased plant growth.
The Arctic tundra is one of the coldest biomes on Earth, and it is rapidly warming. This Arctic greening is really a bellwether of global climatic change and it is a biome-scale response to rising air temperatures.
This study is the first to measure vegetation changes spanning the entire Arctic tundra, from Alaska and Canada to Siberia, using satellite data from Landsat. This mission jointly conducted by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Other studies have used the satellite data to look at smaller regions, since Landsat data can be used to determine how much actively growing vegetation is on the ground. Greening can represent plants growing more, becoming denser, and shrubs encroaching on typical tundra grasses and moss.
Changing tundra vegetation impacts not only the wildlife that depend on certain plants, but also the people who live in the region and depend on local ecosystems for food. While active plants will absorb more carbon from the atmosphere, the warming temperatures could also be thawing permafrost, thereby releasing greenhouse gasses.
From 1985 to 2016, about 38% of the tundra sites across Alaska, Canada, and western Eurasia showed greening. Only 3% showed the opposite browning effect, which would mean fewer actively growing plants. 22% of sites greened between 2000 and 2016, while 4% browned.
The scientists compared these greening patterns with other factors, and found that it is also associated with higher soil temperatures and higher soil moisture. They confirmed these findings with plant growth measurements from field sites around the Arctic.
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