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Tall deciduous shrubs are critically important to carbon and nutrient cycling in high-latitude ecosystems. As Arctic regions warm, shrubs expand heterogeneously across their ranges, including within unburned terrain experiencing isometric gradients of warming. To constrain the effects of widespread shrub expansion in terrestrial and Earth System Models, improved knowledge of local to regional-scale patterns, rates, and controls on decadal shrub expansion is required. Here we map tall deciduous shrub canopies in the central Seward Peninsula of Alaska in 1950 using ~1 meter (m)-resolution aerial photographs from US Navy missions in three subsites (1950ShrubClass.tif and 1950AlderClass.tif) and in 2018 using 3m-resolution PlanetScope satellite imagery for the entire study region (SummerShrubExtent.tif and AlderExtent2017.tif). The timing of alder shrub senescence allowed us to separate the classification into alder and non-alder categories. We computed two change maps: one exclusively for alder and one including all deciduous tall shrubs. The change maps were modeled against a suite of environmental factors and the shrub change model was extended across the study region (SewardShrub.tif). The model was rerun for future scenarios with 10 (SewardMinus10PF.tif) and 30 (SewardMinus30PF.tif) percent reductions in permafrost probability to determine the likely effects of permafrost degradation on shrub extent.
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Nitrogen fixing shrubs advance the pace of tall-shrub expansion in low-Arctic tundra
Abstract Tall deciduous shrubs are critically important to carbon and nutrient cycling in high-latitude ecosystems. As Arctic regions warm, shrubs expand heterogeneously across their ranges, including within unburned terrain experiencing isometric gradients of warming. To constrain the effects of widespread shrub expansion in terrestrial and Earth System Models, improved knowledge of local-to-regional scale patterns, rates, and controls on decadal shrub expansion is required. Using fine-scale remote sensing, we modeled the drivers of patch-scale tall-shrub expansion over 68 years across the central Seward Peninsula of Alaska. Models show the heterogeneous patterns of tall-shrub expansion are not only predictable but have an upper limit defined by permafrost, climate, and edaphic gradients, two-thirds of which have yet to be colonized. These observations suggest that increased nitrogen inputs from nitrogen-fixing alders contributed to a positive feedback that advanced overall tall-shrub expansion. These findings will be useful for constraining and projecting vegetation-climate feedbacks in the Arctic.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1928048
- PAR ID:
- 10493310
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Communications Earth & Environment
- Volume:
- 4
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2662-4435
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-01098-5
