Extensive Land Cover Change Across Arctic-Boreal Northwestern North America from Disturbance and Climate Forcing.

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2019
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Abstract
A multitude of disturbance agents, such as wildfires, land use, and climate-driven expansion of woody shrubs, are transforming the distribution of plant functional types across Arctic-Boreal ecosystems, which has significant implications for interactions and feedbacks between terrestrial ecosystems and climate in the northern high-latitudes. However, because the spatial resolution of existing land cover data sets is too coarse, large-scale land cover changes in the Arctic-Boreal region (ABR) have been poorly characterized. Here we use 31 years (1984-2014) of moderate spatial resolution (30 m) satellite imagery over a region spanning 4.7 x 10 km in Alaska and northwestern Canada to characterize regional-scale ABR land cover changes. We find that 13.6 ± 1.3 % of the domain has changed, primarily via two major modes of transformation: (1) simultaneous disturbance-driven decreases in Evergreen Forest area (-14.7 ± 3.0 % relative to 1984) and increases in Deciduous Forest area (+14.8 ± 5.2 %) in the Boreal biome; and (2) climate-driven expansion of Herbaceous and Shrub vegetation (+7.4 ± 2.0 %) in the Arctic biome. By using time series of 30 m imagery, we characterize dynamics in forest and shrub cover occurring at relatively short spatial scales (hundreds of m) due to fires, harvest, and climate-induced growth that are not observable in coarse spatial resolution (e.g. 500 m or greater pixel size) imagery. Wildfires caused most of Evergreen Forest Loss and Evergreen Forest Gain and substantial areas of Deciduous Forest Gain. Extensive shifts in the distribution of plant functional types at multiple spatial scales are consistent with observations of increased atmospheric CO seasonality and ecosystem productivity at northern high latitudes and signal continental-scale shifts in the structure and function of high northern-latitude ecosystems in response to climate change.
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wang2019extensiveglobal Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Wang, Jonathan A;Sulla-Menashe, Damien;Woodcock, Curtis E;Sonnentag, Oliver;Keeling, Ralph F;Friedl, Mark A;
Journal Global change biology
Year 2019
DOI
10.1111/gcb.14804
URL
Keywords Keywords not found

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