120 Results Found

Fires significantly influence the ecosystems of Western Siberia’s forest–tundra zone. Namely, they alter soil processes, including the transformation of different forms of iron and the redistribution of carbon flows. Recent climate change...

A large proportion of Norway’s land area is occupied by the forest-tundra ecotone. The vegetation of this temperature-sensitive ecosystem between mountain forest and the alpine zone is expected to be highly affected by climate change and effective mo...

The vegetation in the forest-tundra ecotone zone is expected to be highly affected by climate change and requires effective monitoring techniques. Airborne laser scanning (ALS) has been proposed as a tool for the detection of small pioneer trees for...

Altitudinal forest limits are typically climatically dependent, such that increasing temperatures connected to global warming are causing upslope shifts in treeline ecotones worldwide. However, at the local and regional levels, the degree of such a r...

Technogenic processes and agrodevelopment of the soil cover lead to significant transformations of soil chemical and biological properties. New methods of soil microbiology, including next-generation sequencing, allows us to investigate soil microbia...

Permafrost thawing is potentially a crucial but poorly investigated factor that influences vegetation dynamics in the Arctic. We studied the permafrost thaw rate beyond the Polar Circle in Siberia. We analyzed its influence on the larch (Larix spp.)...

Changes of soil properties along elevational gradients were studied in a less accessible and explored forest-tundra ecotone in the NW part of Central Siberia. Data on soil physical and chemical properties were collected along three horizontal transec...

RADARSAT and ERS-2 data collected at multiple incidence angles are used to characterize the seasonal variations in the backscatter of snow-covered landscapes in the northern Hudson Bay Lowlands during the winters of 1997/98 and 1998/99. The study eva...

Due to expected climate change and increased focus on forests as a potential carbon sink, it is of interest to map and monitor even marginal forests where trees exist close to their tolerance limits, such as small pioneer trees in the forest-tundra e...

The spatial and temporal dynamics of the Siberian larch (Larix sibirica Ledeb.) at the upper limit of its growth on the south-eastern macroslope of the Rai-Iz massif (Polar Urals, Russia) during the second half of the 20th to the beginning of the 21s...

Satellite-based estimates of vegetation structure capture broad-scale vegetation characteristics as well as differences in vegetation structure at plot-scales. Active remote sensing from laser altimetry and radar systems is regularly used to measure...

Upland soils of tundra function as a constant sink for atmospheric CH4 but the identity of methane oxidizers in these soils remains poorly understood. Methane uptake rates of −0.4 to −0.6 mg CH4-C m−2 day−1 were determined by...

The history of wildfires along a latitudinal transect from forest–tundra to middle taiga in North-Central Siberia was reconstructed for the period from 1985 to 2020 using Landsat imagery. The transect passed through four key regions (75 ×...

Climate warming significantly impacts Arctic vegetation, yet its future role as a carbon sink or source is unclear. We analyzed vegetation growth and carbon exchange in Alaska’s tundra and needle leaf forests using the LPJ-GUESS model. The accu...

In the Siberian Arctic, worldwide largest forest mortality was caused by chronical (since the 1940s) influence of SO2 emissions on the larch-dominant communities. We hypothesized that warming might mitigate SO2 influence by increasing trees’ vi...

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a relevant component of the surface moisture budget and is associated with different drivers. The interrelated drivers cause variations at daily to interannual timescales. This study uses structural equation modeling to dia...

The main goal of the study was to obtain new experimental data on the seasonal variability of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes in a subarctic palsa mire in north-central Siberia, as well as to assess the sensitivity of the CO2 and CH4 fl...

Global estimates of burned areas, enabled by the wide-open access to the standard data products from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), are heavily relied on by scientists and managers studying issues related to wildfire occur...

Forest structure is a crucial component in the assessment of whether a forest is likely to act as a carbon sink under changing climate. Detailed 3D structural information about the tundra–taiga ecotone of Siberia is mostly missing and still und...

Arctic tundra landscapes are highly complex and are rapidly changing due to the warming climate. Datasets that document the spatial and temporal variability of the landscape are needed to monitor the rapid changes. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imag...

Fossilized body parts of two cold-adapted ground beetle species, Elaphrus lapponicus and Diacheila polita, were identified from a deposit dated to the Late Glacial period in Hokkaido, Japan. The paleoenvironmental reconstruction presented here has be...

A land cover map of two arctic catchments near the Abisko Scientific Research Station was obtained based on a classification from a Sentinel-2 satellite image and a ground survey performed in July 2022. The two contiguous catchments, Miellajokka and...

Monitoring current forest characteristics in the taiga−tundra ecotone (TTE) at multiple scales is critical for understanding its vulnerability to structural changes. A 30 m spatial resolution Landsat-based tree canopy cover map has been calibrated an...

This paper provides the results of a study on fungal species diversity in the active and permafrost layers of peatlands within frozen peatbogs in the flatland areas of the cryolitozone, European Northeast of Russia (forest-tundra zone, southern and n...

Over the past four decades, satellite observations have shown intensified global greening. At the same time, widespread browning and reversal of or stalled greening have been reported at high latitudes. One of the main reasons for this browning/lack...

Alpine plant communities are highly sensitive to global warming. One of the consequences of the warming is encroachment by herbaceous plants from forests at low elevations into alpine ecosystems. In the Changbai Mountains, narrowleaf small reed (Deye...

Alarming reports on the rapid decline of insects during the past decades call for the exploration of potential drivers of this process. Here, we test the hypothesis that the overall abundance and diversity of moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera) decre...

Ecosystem maps are foundational tools that support multi-disciplinary study design and applications including wildlife habitat assessment, monitoring and Earth-system modeling. Here, we present continuous-field cover maps for tundra plant functional...

Climate is one of the key drivers of the plant community’s structure and trends. However, the regional vegetation-climate features in the ecotone have not yet been sufficiently studied. The aim of the research is to study features of Pinus sibi...

Monitoring the evolution of snow on the ground and lake ice—two of the most important components of the changing northern environment—is essential. In this paper, we describe a lightweight, compact and autonomous 24 GHz frequency-modulate...

An analysis of observation data was conducted on the chemical composition of river and groundwater in the Ob River basin, covering more than 23 thousand samples taken from the network of governmental monitoring of surface and groundwater, the materia...

The Ural Mountains and the West Eurasian Taiga forests are one of the most important centers of genetic diversity for Larix sibirica Ledeb. Forest fragmentation negatively impacts forest ecosystems, especially due to the impact of their intensive use...

The dependence of the width of annual rings of woody plants on the characteristics of the snow cover is analyzed in various natural zones of the West Siberian Plain and adjacent mountainous areas: the maximum depth and water reserve for the entire wi...

This study presents the long-term forest history in the forest–tundra ecotone of the Low Yenisei River basin. The new high-resolution pollen and macroscopic charcoal data were inferred from the 8.6 m long peat archive covering the last 6300 yea...

The long-term influence of climate change on spatio-temporal dynamics of the Polar mycobiota was analyzed on the eastern macro slope of the Polar Urals (Sob River valley and Mountain Slantsevaya) over a period of 60 years. The anthropogenic impact is...

Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) in nine species of small mammals (Insectivora and Rodentia) was estimated using 10 cranial features (foramina for nerves and blood vessels). The main criterion was the occurrence of the fluctuating asymmetry manifestations...

The present study aimed to investigate the recovery of soil quality and the bacterial and fungal communities following various recultivation methods in areas contaminated with oil. Oil spills are known to have severe impacts on ecosystems; thus, the...

In this study, we constructed a ring-width chronology derived from Betula ermanii (BE) near the transitional zone between forests and tundra within the Changbai Mountain (CBM) region. This chronology was established utilizing 55 cores obtained from 3...

Global climatic changes have been observed for all natural biomes, with the greatest impact in the permafrost zone. The short series of direct observations of air temperature and precipitation from meteorological stations for this territory make it d...

Changing trends in ecosystem productivity can be quantified using satellite observations of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). However, the estimation of trends from NDVI time series differs substantially depending on analyzed satellite d...

Climate warming at high latitudes has contributed to the growing interest in shrub tree-ring analysis. Shrub architecture presents new challenges for dendrochronology, such as the seemingly lower and inconsistent climatic sensitivity of stems vs. roo...

A risk assessment of vegetation zone responses to climate change was conducted using the classical Holdridge life zone model on the Loess Plateau of Northwest China. The results show that there are currently ten vegetation zones occurring on the Loes...

Aboveground species richness patterns of vascular plants, aphyllophoroid macrofungi, bryophytes and lichens were compared along an altitudinal gradient (80–310 m a.s.l.) on the Slantsevaya mountain at the eastern macroslope of the Polar Urals (...

With the increasing impact of climate change on ecosystems, it is crucial to analyze how changes in precipitation and temperature affect global ecosystems. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the spatiotemporal variation characteristics of the...

Land cover is a fundamental component of crucial importance in the earth sciences. To date, many excellent international teams have created a variety of land cover products covering the entire globe. To provide a reference for researchers studying th...

Climate change dominantly controls the spatial distributions of potential vegetation ecosystems; the shift trends in the mean centers of potential vegetation ecosystems could be used to explain their responses to climate change. In terms of the clima...

West Siberian mires covering more than 50% of area in the subarctic are still poorly investigated despite their thick peat sediments suitable for paleogeographic research of past long-term landscape and climatic changes. In this research, a combinati...

A multiproxy study of a new Pleistocene locality at Ivantzevo, Moscow Region, was conducted to reconstruct paleoenvironments from the Middle Pleistocene to the Last Pleniglacial. Lacustrine deposits and peat accumulated in a wetland within a fluviogl...

The analysis of a series of five normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images produced information about a Labrador (Canada) portion of the tundra-taiga interface. The twenty-five year observation period ranges from 1983 to 2008. The series c...

Free radicals (FRs) are intermediate participants in the transformation process of soil organic matter, and free radical activity is a fundamental property of humic substances. The aim of this work was to conduct a comparative study of the paramagnet...