| 1. |
- Callaghan, Terry V., et al.
(författare)
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Ecosystem change and stability over multiple decades in the Swedish subarctic : complex processes and multiple drivers
- 2013
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8436 .- 1471-2970. ; 368:1624
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The subarctic environment of northernmost Sweden has changed over the past century, particularly elements of climate and cryosphere. This paper presents a unique geo-referenced record of environmental and ecosystem observations from the area since 1913. Abiotic changes have been substantial. Vegetation changes include not only increases in growth and range extension but also counterintuitive decreases, and stability: all three possible responses. Changes in species composition within the major plant communities have ranged between almost no changes to almost a 50 per cent increase in the number of species. Changes in plant species abundance also vary with particularly large increases in trees and shrubs (up to 600%). There has been an increase in abundance of aspen and large changes in other plant communities responding to wetland area increases resulting from permafrost thaw. Populations of herbivores have responded to varying management practices and climate regimes, particularly changing snow conditions. While it is difficult to generalize and scale-up the site-specific changes in ecosystems, this very site-specificity, combined with projections of change, is of immediate relevance to local stakeholders who need to adapt to new opportunities and to respond to challenges. Furthermore, the relatively small area and its unique datasets are a microcosm of the complexity of Arctic landscapes in transition that remains to be documented.
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| 2. |
- Jawak, Shridhar D., et al.
(författare)
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SIOS's Earth Observation (EO), Remote Sensing (RS), and Operational Activities in Response to COVID-19
- 2021
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Ingår i: Remote Sensing. - : MDPI. - 2072-4292. ; 13:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) is an international partnership of research institutions studying the environment and climate in and around Svalbard. SIOS is developing an efficient observing system, where researchers share technology, experience, and data, work together to close knowledge gaps, and decrease the environmental footprint of science. SIOS maintains and facilitates various scientific activities such as the State of the Environmental Science in Svalbard (SESS) report, international access to research infrastructure in Svalbard, Earth observation and remote sensing services, training courses for the Arctic science community, and open access to data. This perspective paper highlights the activities of SIOS Knowledge Centre, the central hub of SIOS, and the SIOS Remote Sensing Working Group (RSWG) in response to the unprecedented situation imposed by the global pandemic coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) disease 2019 (COVID-19). The pandemic has affected Svalbard research in several ways. When Norway declared a nationwide lockdown to decrease the rate of spread of the COVID-19 in the community, even more strict measures were taken to protect the Svalbard community from the potential spread of the disease. Due to the lockdown, travel restrictions, and quarantine regulations declared by many nations, most physical meetings, training courses, conferences, and workshops worldwide were cancelled by the first week of March 2020. The resumption of physical scientific meetings is still uncertain in the foreseeable future. Additionally, field campaigns to polar regions, including Svalbard, were and remain severely affected. In response to this changing situation, SIOS initiated several operational activities suitable to mitigate the new challenges resulting from the pandemic. This article provides an extensive overview of SIOS's Earth observation (EO), remote sensing (RS) and other operational activities strengthened and developed in response to COVID-19 to support the Svalbard scientific community in times of cancelled/postponed field campaigns in Svalbard. These include (1) an initiative to patch up field data (in situ) with RS observations, (2) a logistics sharing notice board for effective coordinating field activities in the pandemic times, (3) a monthly webinar series and panel discussion on EO talks, (4) an online conference on EO and RS, (5) the SIOS's special issue in the Remote Sensing (MDPI) journal, (6) the conversion of a terrestrial remote sensing training course into an online edition, and (7) the announcement of opportunity (AO) in airborne remote sensing for filling the data gaps using aerial imagery and hyperspectral data. As SIOS is a consortium of 24 research institutions from 9 nations, this paper also presents an extensive overview of the activities from a few research institutes in pandemic times and highlights our upcoming activities for the next year 2021. Finally, we provide a critical perspective on our overall response, possible broader impacts, relevance to other observing systems, and future directions. We hope that our practical services, experiences, and activities implemented in these difficult times will motivate other similar monitoring programs and observing systems when responding to future challenging situations. With a broad scientific audience in mind, we present our perspective paper on activities in Svalbard as a case study.
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| 3. |
- Karlsson, Per Erik, et al.
(författare)
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Biomass burning in eastern Europe during spring 2006 caused high deposition of ammonium in northern Fennoscandia
- 2013
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Ingår i: Environmental Pollution. - : Elsevier BV. - 0269-7491. ; 176, s. 71-79
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- High air concentrations of ammonium were detected at low and high altitude sites in Sweden, Finland and Norway during the spring 2006, coinciding with polluted air from biomass burning in eastern Europe passing over central and northern Fennoscandia. Unusually high values for throughfall deposition of ammonium were detected at one low altitude site and several high altitude sites in north Sweden. The occurrence of the high ammonium in throughfall differed between the summer months 2006, most likely related to the timing of precipitation events. The ammonia dry deposition may have contributed to unusual visible injuries on the tree vegetation in northern Fennoscandia that occurred during 2006, in combination with high ozone concentrations. It is concluded that long-range transport of ammonium from large-scale biomass burning may contribute substantially to the nitrogen load at northern latitudes. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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| 4. |
- Olofsson, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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Vole and lemming activity observed from space
- 2012
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Ingår i: Nature Climate Change. - 1758-678X .- 1758-6798. ; 2:12, s. 880-883
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Predicting the impacts of present global warming requires an understanding of the factors controlling plant biomass and production. The extent to which they are controlled by bottom-up drivers such as climate, nutrient and water availability, and by top-down drivers such as herbivory and diseases in terrestrial systems is still under debate(1). By annually recording plant biomass and community composition in grazed control plots and in herbivore-free exclosures, at 12 sites in a subArctic ecosystem, we were able to show that the regular interannual density fluctuations of voles and lemmings drive synchronous interannual fluctuations in the biomass of field-layer vegetation. Plant biomass in the field layer was between 12 and 24% lower the year after a vole peak than the year before, and the combined vole and lemming peaks are visible as a reduced normalized difference vegetation index in satellite images over a 770 km(2) area in the following year, despite the wide range of abiotic, biotic and anthropogenic forces that influence the vegetation(2-5). This strongly suggests that the cascading effect of rodents for the function and diversity of tundra plant communities needs to be included in our scenarios of how these ecosystems will respond to environmental changes.
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