Snow-vegetation relations in a High Arctic ecosystem: Inter-annual variability inferred from new monitoring and modeling concepts

Evidence of Nonlinearity in the Response of Net Ecosystem CO2Exchange to Increasing Levels of Winter Snow Depth in the High Arctic of Northwest Greenland

“…Increased snow depth leads to shorter growing seasons (ACIA, 2005;Buus-Hinkler et al, 2006;Cooper et al, 2011) if not counteracted by an earlier snowmelt due to warmer spring weather. Buus-Hinkler et al (2006) indicated that the timing of snowmelt in NE Greenland is affected by both precipitation and temperature, and suggested that climate change could lead to heavier snow packs and negative impacts on vegetation in this region. Projected changes for NE Greenland and the European High Arctic are opposite to the expected elongation of growing seasons in many subarctic areas, thus underlining the importance of taking into account regional variation in projections and responses.…”

“…Snow fences have also been used by researchers to study vegetation responses to reduced snow depth in windward side and increased snow depth at the leeward side (see Wipf and Rixen, 2010, for a review). Several authors studied the effects of increased snow depth as a possible outcome of climate change in the High Arctic (Buus-Hinkler et al, 2006;Morgner et al, 2010;Cooper et al, 2011;Rogers et al, 2011) and in Alaska a long-term study has been underway since 1994 (Jones et al, 1998;Walker et al, 1999;Schimel et al, 2004;Sturm et al, 2005;Wahren et al, 2005;. Collectively these studies indicate that deeper snow will have cascading effects on soil Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, Vol.…”

Data Mining from Remote Sensing Snow and Vegetation Product

“…In forested area, the amount of snow is 40% lower than in nearby clear-cut reference sites (Winker et al, 2005). Presence of snow affects both length of growing season, and primary plant production (Buus-Hinkler et al, 2006). Long snow-covered periods will shorten vegetative season, for snow-cover prevents the initiation of growing season until it disappears from vegetated areas (Palacios, 1997;Buus-Hinkler et al, 2006).…”

“…Presence of snow affects both length of growing season, and primary plant production (Buus-Hinkler et al, 2006). Long snow-covered periods will shorten vegetative season, for snow-cover prevents the initiation of growing season until it disappears from vegetated areas (Palacios, 1997;Buus-Hinkler et al, 2006). Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), an index of vegetation greenness derived from remote sensing data (Jia et al, 2004) is frequently employed.…”

“…Different latitudes (Hope et al, 2004) and vegetation types (Jia et al, 2004) are also assessed. Buus-Hinkler et al (2006) monitored Snow-NDVI relations at Zackenberg in high Arctic Northeast Greenland at both high spatial and high temporal resolution, and developed a semi-empirical model to calculate snow-cover extent and NDVI. They contributed to establish a detailed relation between vegetation and snow in High Arctic areas.…”