A Half-Century of Change in Arctic Alaskan Shrubs: A Photographic-Based Assessment

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The project will take aerial photographs of the same terrain photographed approximately 50 years previously to examine changes in the environment, particularly the expansion of areas dominated by shrubs. Shrub size, density, and extent will be compared between the old scenes and the new photographs to see if previous results from a pilot study are applicable to a wider area of the North Slope. The northward expansion of shrubs is an expected response to climate warming and will have important implications for global change research in an area expected to experience the first impacts from global warming. On-site measurements of vegetation indices (e.g. vegetation age, size, dimensions, composition, spacing, growth rates) will be used in comparison with temperature history to assess the impacts of warming climate on shrub growth/expansion in the region.