Drying Tundra Landscapes in West Greenland
Publications and MediaFinger Higgens, R.A., Chipman, J.W., Lutz, D.A., Culler, L.E., Virginia, R.A., Ogden, L.A. (2019). Changing lake dynamics in western Greenland. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.124, 870-883. DOI: 10.1029/2018JG004879
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/arctic-lakes-are-vanishing-by-the-hundreds/ https://www.nhpr.org/post/dartmouth-study-arctic-warming-shrinking-tundra-lakes#stream/0 |
Arctic tundra environments may become drier as the climate continues to warm, due to changes in precipitation and evaporation patterns, and losses of permanent ground ice. In many Arctic systems, lakes are widely distributed and thus can serveas an early indicator of drying conditions. We predicted that our study region of west Greenland would be particularly susceptible to drying due to low levels of precipitation and observed warming trends at a rate of approximately 0.5 °C per decade. Using historical and modern satellite and aerial imagery, we observed a decrease in the number of small lakes by 28% and a 15% decrease in the total area of smaller water bodies between 1969 and 2017. Additionally, we found that many of the disappeared lakes from 1969 appeared to have become vegetated. An analysis of historical weather data suggested that water losses to the atmosphere via evaporation have likely increased, especially in the summer months, which may be contributing to observed lake decline. Declining small lake area across our study region and other parts of the Arctic can have landscape‐wide effects such as changes to available animal habitat, increases in the risk of fire, and to the prevalence of drought conditions.
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