Transitions in high-Arctic vegetation growth patterns and ecosystem productivity tracked with automated cameras from 2000 to 2013

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Climate-induced changes in vegetation phenology at northern latitudes are still poorly understood. Continued monitoring and research are therefore needed to improve the understanding of abiotic drivers. Here we used 14 years of time lapse imagery and climate data from high-Arctic Northeast Greenland to assess the seasonal response of a dwarf shrub heath, grassland, and fen, to inter-annual variation in snow-cover, soil moisture, and air and soil temperatures. A late snow melt and start of growing season is counterbalanced by a fast greenup and a tendency to higher peak greenness values. Snow water equivalents and soil moisture explained up to 77 % of growing season duration and senescence phase, highlighting that water availability is a prominent driver in the heath site, rather than temperatures. We found a significant advance in the start of spring by 10 days and in the end of fall by 11 days, resulting in an unchanged growing season length. Vegetation greenness, derived from the imagery, was correlated to primary productivity, showing that the imagery holds valuable information on vegetation productivity.

Original languageEnglish
JournalAmbio
Volume46
Issue numberSuppl. 1
Pages (from-to)39-52
Number of pages14
ISSN0044-7447
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Bibliographical note

CENPERMOA[2017]

    Research areas

  • High-Arctic, Photography, Primary productivity, Time lapse, Vegetation phenology

Number of downloads are based on statistics from Google Scholar and www.ku.dk


No data available

ID: 173286370