NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Gwich'in Settlement Area

Tags: physical sciences, tree core sampling, global warming, vegetation monitoring

Objective(s): To monitor vegetation changes in current climate warming for simulating past and future dynamics with an individual-based spatially explicit model (LAVESI).

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No. 5605. The goal is to monitor vegetation changes in current climate warming for simulating past and future dynamics with an individual-based spatially explicit model (LAVESI). Therefore, our intentions are to assess stand inventories at diverse bioclimatic and environmental settings by a space-for-time approach; to gather remote sensing data for local and regional upscaling across environmental gradients; and, to conduct year-round monitoring at key sites to disentangle the complex permafrost-soil-vegetation-climate interaction. Compared to the fieldwork performed last year, this time the research team focus mainly on the forest structure. The team therefore reduce the sampling to two main non-destructive methods: 1) analysis of the forest structure by measuring vegetation height and microtopography with measuring tapes and active layer sticks; and, 2) ground and airborne surveys for multispectral and LiDAR 3D point cloud generation of vegetation and microtopography over short transects covering gradients of land surface cover. The research team would also like to revisit some of the monitoring sites of the last years expedition to check the instruments such as dendrometers or soil moisture and temperature. The team will use social media channels for documentation during field work and the institute website for informing the public about the project and the outcome. A field report will be published in Reports on Polar and Marine Research (https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/publications/reports-on-polar-and-marine-research.html); The research results will be presented at international conferences. All data collected during the project period and the involved field work will be publicly available on the platform PANGAEA (https://www.pangaea.de/); Manuscripts based on the research will be submitted to Open Access journals to allow public accession. Attached you can also find the report of the last years field campaign. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from July 1, 2023 to July 31, 2023.