Rapid Assessment of Recent Changes in Land Cover and Carbon Balance in Beringia

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Funds are provided to develop and test a methodology for the rapid assessment of the patterns of decadal time scale land cover change at multiple sites throughout the Beringia region and to gauge the probable impact these changes have had on ecosystem carbon balance. The project is made possible by participation in the Swedish Beringia 2005 Expedition. Land cover change will be assessed at the plot level in collaboration with a Russian colleague who established marked plots throughout the region between 1984 and 1986. At the landscape level, land cover change will be assessed using modern high-spatial resolution satellite imagery to derive supervised land cover classifications that will be compared to land cover maps derived from newly archived historical air photos and/or recently declassified military spy imagery. Component land-atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide and methane will be measured in collaboration with a Swedish colleague in multiple land cover types at each site visited. Component fluxes will be extrapolated to the landscape level for each multi-temporal land cover assessment and the probable changes in carbon balance over time and space will be estimated. Monolith, soil, and vegetation samples will be collected for controlled laboratory experiments and analyses that will enable cross-site comparison of a range of biogeochemical processes.