English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

. Arctic tundra ecosystems will play a key role in future climate change due tointensifying permafrost thawing, plant growth and ecosystem carbon exchange,but monitoring these changes may be challenging due to the heterogeneity ofArctic landscapes. We examined spatial variation and linkages of soil andplant attributes in a site of Siberian Arctic tundra in Tiksi, northeastRussia, and evaluated possibilities to capture this variation by remotesensing for the benefit of carbon exchange measurements and landscapeextrapolation. We distinguished nine land cover types (LCTs) and tocharacterize them, sampled 92 study plots for plant and soil attributes in2014. Moreover, to test if variation in plant and soil attributes can bedetected using remote sensing, we produced a normalized difference vegetationindex (NDVI) and topographical parameters for each study plot using threevery high spatial resolution multispectral satellite images. We found thatsoils ranged from mineral soils in bare soil and lichen tundra LCTs to soilsof high percentage of organic matter (OM) in graminoid tundra, bog, dry fenand wet fen. OM content of the top soil was on average 14  g dm−3 in baresoil and lichen tundra and 89  g dm−3 in other LCTs. Total moss biomassvaried from 0 to 820  g m−2 , total vascular shoot mass from 7 to 112  g m−2 and vascular leaf area index (LAI) from 0.04 to 0.95 among LCTs. Inlate summer, soil temperatures at 15  cm depth were on average 14  ∘C in bare soil and lichen tundra, and varied from 5 to 9  ∘C inother LCTs. On average, depth of the biologically active, unfrozen soil layerdoubled from early July to mid-August.When contrasted across study plots,moss biomass was positively associated with soil OM  % and OM content andnegatively associated with soil temperature, explaining 14–34  % ofvariation. Vascular shoot mass and LAI were also positively associated withsoil OM content, and LAI with active layer depth, but only explained 6–15  % of variation. NDVI captured variation in vascular LAI better than inmoss biomass, but while this difference was significant with late seasonNDVI, it was minimal with early season NDVI. For this reason, soil attributesassociated with moss mass were better captured by early season NDVI.Topographic attributes were related to LAI and many soil attributes, but notto moss biomass and could not increase the amount of spatial variationexplained in plant and soil attributes above that achieved by NDVI. The LCTmap we produced had low to moderate uncertainty in predictions for plant andsoil properties except for moss biomass and bare soil and lichen tundra LCTs.Our results illustrate a typical tundra ecosystem with great fine-scalespatial variation in both plant and soil attributes. Mosses dominate plantbiomass and control many soil attributes, including OM  % and temperature,but variation in moss biomass is difficult to capture by remote sensingreflectance, topography or a LCT map. Despite the general accuracy oflandscape level predictions in our LCT approach, this indicates challenges inthe spatial extrapolation of some of those vegetation and soil attributesthat are relevant for the regional ecosystem and global climate models.

Spatial variation and linkages of soil and vegetation in the Siberian Arctic tundra – coupling field observations with remote sensing data