Arctic and boreal ecosystems of western North America as components of the climate system
By F. S. Chapin, A. D. Mcguire, J. Randerson, R. Pielke, D. D. Baldocchi, S. Hobbie, N. Roulet, Werner Eugster, E. Kasischke, E. Rastetter and 2 more. Global Change Biology, 2000
632 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Synthesis of results from several Arctic and boreal research programmes provides evidence for the strong role of high‐latitude ecosystems in the climate system. Average surface air temperature has increased 0.3 °C per decade during the twentieth century in the western North American Arctic and boreal forest zones. Precipitation has also increased, but changes in soil moisture are uncertain. Disturbance rates have increased in the boreal forest; for example, there has been a doubling of the area burned in North America in the past 20 years. The disturbance regime in tundra may not have changed. Tundra has a 3–6‐fold higher winter albedo than boreal forest, but summer albedo and energy partitioning differ more strongly among ecosystems within either tundra or boreal forest than between these two biomes. This indicates a need to improve our understanding of vegetation dynamics within, as well as between, biomes. If regional surface warming were to continue, changes in albedo and energy absorption would likely act as a positive feedback to regional warming due to earlier melting of snow and, over the long term, the northward movement of treeline. Surface drying and a change in dominance from mosses to vascular plants would also enhance sensible heat flux and regional warming in tundra. In the boreal forest of western North America, deciduous forests have twice the albedo of conifer forests in both winter and summer, 50–80% higher evapotranspiration, and therefore only 30–50% of the sensible heat flux of conifers in summer. Therefore, a warming‐induced increase in fire frequency that increased the proportion of deciduous forests in the landscape, would act as a negative feedback to regional warming.
Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Ecology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/afea27bb39ac33e4e3f1d0cda37b9b4b8edff6fb
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Atmospheric Science
In Ecology
Citations in the corpus
- Biogenic volatile organic compounds in the Earth system. (2009, background): “…at lower latitudes (Cox et al., 2004), especially in Amazonia, but show the upward and northward expansion of boreal forests under climate warming (Chapin et al., 2000; Kittel et al., 2000), as confirmed by field observations (Luckman & Kavanagh, 2000; Kullman, 2001; Penuelas & Boada, 2003).”
- Disturbance Dynamics and Ecological Response: The Contribution of Long-Term Ecological Research (2003, neutral): “For example,fire frequency influences patterns of energy partitioning (Chapin et al. 2000) and carbon dynamics (Kasischke et al. 1995).”
- STRUCTURALLY NOVEL BIOMES: A RESPONSE TO PAST WARMING IN BERINGIA (2005, neutral): “1696 S pe c ia l Fe at u r e Key words: Beringia; boreal forest; climate change; Holocene; novel biomes; plant functional types.”
- Challenges in using land use and land cover data for global change studies (2011, background): “At the global scale, changes in land surface properties associated with changes in vegetation can have impacts on continental and global atmospheric circulation, with possible large impacts on regional and continental climate (Pielke et al., 1998; Chapin et al., 2000).”
- DIEL MINERALIZATION PATTERNS OF STANDING-DEAD PLANT LITTER: IMPLICATIONS FOR CO2 FLUX FROM WETLANDS (2004, background): “E-mail: kkuehn@emich.edu Gorham 1991, Bridgham et al. 1995, Chapin et al. 2000, Moore 2002).”
- Biodiversity Regulation of Ecosystem Services (2005, background): “Because increasing temperatures will increase fire frequency, this may act as a one of the few potential negative feedbacks to high-latitude warming (Chapin et al. 2000c).”
- Natural disturbance impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity in temperate and boreal forests (2015, neutral): “In recent decades, forest disturbance regimes have intensified in many parts of the world (Chapin et al., 2000; Schelhaas, Nabuurs & Schuck, 2003; Balshi et al., 2007; Gardiner et al., 2010).”
- Analysis of vegetation distribution in Interior Alaska and sensitivity to climate change using a logistic regression approach (2005, background): “In contrast, an increase in the proportion of deciduous forests at the expense of conifers has the potential to reduce energy absorption and work against atmospheric warming (Chapin et al., 2000a).”