skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Environmental Monitoring in the Kapp Linné-Grønfjorden Region (KLEO) in Van den Heuvel et al. (eds): SESS report 2019, Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System, Longyearbyen
The ability to understand and predict environmental changes in Svalbard is highly dependent on the availability of detailed and long-term records of baseline environmental data from a regional network across the archipelago. The Kapp Linné region provides a strategic location for a dedicated long-term environmental observatory in the western coastal region of the Nordenskiöldland Peninsula. This region is greatly influenced by the Atlantic High Arctic maritime climate regime (Eckerstorfer and Christiansen 2011) with higher mean annual air temperature and greater precipitation than the more continental interior regime in central Spitsbergen (Humlum 2002). With the recent intensified Atlantification of the northern Barents Sea (Nilsen et al. 2016; Barton et al. 2018), environmental monitoring studies along the Nordenskiöldland coast may help to serve as an early warning system for climate change and accompanying environmental responses across the Svalbard archipelago.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1744433
PAR ID:
10156411
Author(s) / Creator(s):
Date Published:
Journal Name:
SESS report
ISSN:
2535-6321
Page Range / eLocation ID:
84-107
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Retelle, Michael J (Ed.)
    Long-term hydroclimate monitoring in Linnédalen, western Spitsbergen provides a baseline for understanding climate and environmental change in the rapidly warming 21st century climate in Svalbard. Monitoring watershed and climatological processes also provides the means for directly interpreting the annually resolved sedimentation record (varves) in proglacial Linnévatnet, which in turn, will allow for an understanding of the current hydroclimatic regime in a long-term context. Related sediment core data were submitted by our collaboration partners at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. An automated weather station, snow depth and stream water temperature sensors, time-lapse cameras, and moorings in Linnévatnet have been deployed since 2003 in the 31 square kilometer (km2) catchment of Linnédalen. This project (2016-2023) follows hydroclimate studies initiated during the National Science Foundation - Office of Polar Programs (NSF-OPP) sponsored Svalbard Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) which ran from 2003 to 2013 archived and research and teaching in Linnédalen while the project was affiliated with the University Centre in Svalbard 2016-2022. Data from the earlier phase of the Linnedalen monitoring project includes weather station measurements, time lapse photography, and student theses and reports was archived in the Arctic Data Center and can be found here: https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/urn:uuid:1b96e994-20a1-4445-a327-3256c040034f 
    more » « less
  2. African ecosystems hold enormous ecological and economic value due to high biodiversity (Myers et al. 2000) and valuable ecosystem services provided to urban and agrarian populations (Wangai et al. 2016). However, these services are vulnerable to land use and climate change (Niang et al. 2014). Long paleoecological records from Africa provide iconic examples of abrupt environmental change, offering critical evidence for tipping points in the Earth system. Datasets in the region are notoriously difficult to access with the African Pollen Database (APD) largely unsupported for the last decade. Poor data accessibility has been a community complaint. 
    more » « less
  3. Indirect effects of climate change on demographic processes are likely widespread but difficult to measure. Hacket-Pain et al. show that climate warming increased European beech seed production, depleting internal resources and causing long-term growth declines. If similar trade-offs occur across species, climate change may weaken forest resilience through resource depletion. 
    more » « less
  4. This Arctic Observing Network (AON) project focuses on maintaining and expanding our long-term network of measurements of carbon, water, and energy exchange in terrestrial systems in Alaska. These exchanges help regulate the Arctic System and its feedbacks to global climate. Thus, extending long-term observations is a key science priority for the observing-change component of the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH). Detecting and interpreting change in arctic carbon (C), water, and energy fluxes requires a continuous year-round record over multiple years. Recent data syntheses and modeling studies of Arctic Carbon balance suggest that tundra is either a carbon dioxide (CO2) sink, a source, or neutral (e.g., McGuire et al., 2009, McGuire et al., 2012) . This uncertainty arises mainly from a lack of data on winter CO2 flux and how tundra responds to recent warming. Because of harsh, remote environments and the lack of line power, long-term measurements of arctic CO2 fluxes over the full year are rare. We have been measuring year-round C, water, and energy fluxes for eleven years in two broadly representative flagship observatories with long-term histories of research, at Imnavait Creek near Toolik Lake, Alaska. To help interpret inter-annual variability we began making plot-based Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) measurements three times a summer at our Imnavait Creek sites. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract Environmental monitoring and long-term research produce detailed understanding, but its collective effort does not add up to ‘the environment’ and therefore may be difficult to relate to. Local knowledge, by contrast, is multifaceted and relational and therefore can help ground and complement scientific knowledge to reach a more complete and holistic understanding of the environment and changes therein. Today’s societies, however, are increasingly fleeting, with mobility potentially undermining the opportunity to generate rich community knowledge. Here we perform a case study of High Arctic Svalbard, a climate change and environmental science hotspot, using a range of community science methods, including a Maptionnaire survey, focus groups, interviews and cognitive mapping. We show that rich local knowledge on Svalbard could indeed be gathered through community science methods, despite a high level of transience of the local population. These insights complement environmental monitoring and enhance its local relevance. Complex understanding of Svalbard’s ecosystems by the transient local community arose because of strong place attachment, enabling environmental knowledge generation during work and play. We conclude that transience does not necessarily prevent the generation of valuable local knowledge that can enrich and provide connection to scientific understanding of the environment. 
    more » « less