Vegetation shifts observed in arctic tundra 17 years after fire

The response of Arctic vegetation and soils following an unusually severe tundra fire

Fire causes dramatic short-term changes in vegetation and ecosystem function, and may promote rapid vegetation change by creating recruitment opportunities. Climate warming likely will increase the frequency of wildfire in the Arctic, where it is not common now. In 2007, the unusually severe Anaktuvuk River fire burned 1039 km(2) of tundra on Alaska's North Slope. Four years later, we harvested...

Seasonal Differences in Nutrient Allocation of Arctic Tundra Vegetation

Vegetation responses in Alaskan arctic tundra after 8 years of a summer warming and winter snow manipulation experiment

We used snow fences and small (1m) open-topped fiberglass chambers (OTCs) to study the effects of changes in winter snow cover and summer air temperatures on arctic tundra. In 1994, two 60m long, 2.8m high snow fences, one in moist and the other in dry tundra, were erected at Toolik Lake, Alaska. OTCs paired with unwarmed plots, were placed along each experimental snow gradient and in control a...

Biotic controls over spectral reflectance of arctic tundra vegetation

In this study, seasonal field measurements of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), using a field spectroradiometer, and leaf area index (LAI), using a LI-COR LAI-2000 Plant Canopy Analyzer, were compared with above-ground phytomass data to investigate relationships between vegetation properties and spectral indices for four distinct tundra vegetation types at Ivotuk, Alaska (68.49...

Recent Arctic tundra fire initiates widespread thermokarst development

Fire-induced permafrost degradation is well documented in boreal forests, but the role of fires in initiating thermokarst development in Arctic tundra is less well understood. Here we show that Arctic tundra fires may induce widespread thaw subsidence of permafrost terrain in the first seven years following the disturbance. Quantitative analysis of airborne LiDAR data acquired two and seven yea...