Landscape variability of vegetation change across the forest to tundra transition of central Canada

Widespread increases in the productivity of tundra ecosystems and static trends – or even declines – in boreal ecosystems have been detected since the early 1980s using coarse-scale remote sensing. However, intermediate-scale Landsat studies have shown that these changes are heterogeneous and may be...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote sensing of environment 2018-11, Vol.217, p.18-29
Main Authors: Bonney, Mitchell T., Danby, Ryan K., Treitz, Paul M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alnus viridis crispa
Arctic greening
Boreal forest
Boreal forests
Climate variability
Drainage systems
Ecosystems
Environmental changes
Forests
Functional groups
Global warming
Greening
In situ measurement
Lakes
Land cover
Land use
Landsat
Landsat satellites
Landscape
Moisture availability
NDVI
Normalized difference vegetative index
Picea glauca
Picea mariana
Pixels
Polar environments
Productivity
Random Forest
Remote sensing
Summer temperatures
Taiga
Taiga & tundra
Treeline
Trends
Tundra
Variability
Vegetation
Vegetation index
Woodlands
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Summary:Widespread increases in the productivity of tundra ecosystems and static trends – or even declines – in boreal ecosystems have been detected since the early 1980s using coarse-scale remote sensing. However, intermediate-scale Landsat studies have shown that these changes are heterogeneous and may be related to landscape and regional variability in climate, land cover, topography and moisture availability. In this study, a Landsat Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series (1984–2016) was examined for an area spanning the transition from sub-Arctic boreal forest to Low Arctic tundra in central Canada. This was supplemented by analyses of relationships with a suite of environmental variables and in situ measurements of bulk vegetation volume. Results show that NDVI trends were generally positive (i.e. increasing) across the study area but were smallest in the forest zone and largest in the northern tundra zone. More than one-quarter (27%) of un-masked pixels exhibited a significant (p 
ISSN:0034-4257
1879-0704
DOI:10.1016/j.rse.2018.08.002