Ecological resistance and recovery in the western Arctic

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Global environmental change is causing rapid, often irreversible shifts in the structure and functioning of ecosystems. Understanding the factors that make ecosystems resilient or susceptible to changes in climate and disturbance regimes is critical to efforts to anticipate the impacts of global environmental change. Over the next five years, I will continue to advance my long-term goal of developing a framework to predict changes in northern vegetation and permafrost. To accomplish this, the short-term objectives of my research are to identify the determinants of 1) ecological resistance and 2) ecological recovery. Over the next five years, 4Phd, 2MSc, and 4BSc students will use remote sensing, spatial models, and field studies to isolate the biophysical controls of resistance and recovery in Arctic ecosystems. These projects will advance our understanding of the factors shaping ecological resilience, yield maps of vegetation and permafrost change that inform regional decision making, and contribute to the training of the next generation of environmental scientists.