Environmental & Climate Sciences Department Seminar

Terrestrial vegetation plays an important role in regulating global carbon, water, and energy fluxes and moderates anthropogenic warming. In the remote Arctic, the climate has warmed two to four times faster than the rest of the planet, driving pronounced changes in vegetation distribution, function, and seasonal dynamics (known as "Arctic greening"). These changes in Arctic vegetation, on par with permafrost thaw, essentially determine the fate of the carbon and energy budget of the Arctic. However, complex interactions among climate, permafrost, landforms, and vegetation create highly-complex Arctic ecosystems that are hard to characterize across spatial and temporal scales. This is further complicated by the region's remoteness and harsh environmental conditions. Incomplete understanding and simplified representation of Arctic vegetation in Earth System Models has led to large uncertainties in our prediction of Arctic processes. In this seminar, I will present how novel multi-scale remote sensing technologies - from ground to unoccupied aerial systems (UASs), airborne, and satellites - can address these observational challenges to improve our understanding of Arctic ecosystems across spatial and temporal scales.