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Barichivich, Jonathan, Briffa, Keith, Myneni, Ranga, van der Schrier, Gerard, Dorigo, Wouter, Tucker, Compton, Osborn, Timothy 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8425-6799 and Melvin, Thomas
(2014)
Temperature and snow-mediated moisture controls of summer photosynthetic activity in northern terrestrial ecosystems between 1982 and 2011.
Remote Sensing, 6 (2).
pp. 1390-1431.
ISSN 2072-4292
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Abstract
Recent warming has stimulated the productivity of boreal and Arctic vegetation by reducing temperature limitations. However, several studies have hypothesized that warming may have also increased moisture limitations because of intensified summer drought severity. Establishing the connections between warming and drought stress has been difficult because soil moisture observations are scarce. Here we use recently developed gridded datasets of moisture variability to investigate the links between warming and changes in available soil moisture and summer vegetation photosynthetic activity at northern latitudes (>45°N) based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) since 1982. Moisture and temperature exert a significant influence on the interannual variability of summer NDVI over about 29% (mean r2 = 0.29 ± 0.16) and 43% (mean r2 = 0.25 ± 0.12) of the northern vegetated land, respectively. Rapid summer warming since the late 1980s (~0.7 °C) has increased evapotranspiration demand and consequently summer drought severity, but contrary to earlier suggestions it has not changed the dominant climate controls of NDVI over time. Furthermore, changes in snow dynamics (accumulation and melting) appear to be more important than increased evaporative demand in controlling changes in summer soil moisture availability and NDVI in moisture-sensitive regions of the boreal forest. In boreal North America, forest NDVI declines are more consistent with reduced snowpack rather than with temperature-induced increases in evaporative demand as suggested in earlier studies. Moreover, summer NDVI variability over about 28% of the northern vegetated land is not significantly associated with moisture or temperature variability, yet most of this land shows increasing NDVI trends. These results suggest that changes in snow accumulation and melt, together with other possibly non-climatic factors are likely to play a significant role in modulating regional ecosystem responses to the projected warming and increase in evapotranspiration demand during the coming decades.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | boreal forest,snowpack,drought,soil moisture,ndv13g,scpdsi,sdg 13 - climate action,sdg 15 - life on land ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Climatic Research Unit |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | Pure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 30 May 2014 20:46 |
| Last Modified: | 31 Oct 2023 01:43 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/47980 |
| DOI: | 10.3390/rs6021390 |
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