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Vegetation Change

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Thawing Permafrost

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Abstract

Vegetation in permafrost areas is already changing as a result of climate change. Since vegetation strongly affects the heat balance of permafrost soils and the amount of ecosystem carbon in soils and biomass, this is an important aspect of the permafrost carbon cycle. Zonal vegetation change is currently showing mostly as shrub expansion in the southern parts of the tundra biome, while northward migration of the tree line is lagging behind. Satellite remote sensing has recorded this ‘Arctic greening’, but it is not uniform throughout the Arctic – also ‘browning’ occurs regionally for various reasons; amongst these are the effects of regional climate variation and effects of permafrost thaw. A larger vegetation biomass does not necessarily result in a larger soil carbon content; in some cases a decrease or depth shifts of soil carbon have been reported. Wildfires that may induce permafrost thaw are expected to increase in case of drier and warmer climates; this includes tundra fires.

Permafrost thaw and decomposition of thawed organic matter liberates nutrients, but it depends on plant traits to what extent the additional nutrients increase the vegetation and biomass. Abrupt permafrost thaw results in severe ecosystem disturbance. Ecosystems are resilient to a certain amount of disturbance, although these disturbances results in large soil carbon losses that only can be regained in time scales of centuries to millennia, and in particular the ‘certain amount of disturbance’ needs assessment. Superposed on the effects of climate change are other anthropogenic disturbances of ecosystems that affect permafrost.

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van Huissteden, J. (2020). Vegetation Change. In: Thawing Permafrost. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31379-1_6

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