Grimes, M., Carrivick, J.L. orcid.org/0000-0002-9286-5348, Smith, M.W. et al. (1 more author) (2024) Land cover changes across Greenland dominated by a doubling of vegetation in three decades. Scientific Reports, 14. 3120. ISSN 2045-2322
Abstract
Land cover responses to climate change must be quantified for understanding Arctic climate, managing Arctic water resources, maintaining the health and livelihoods of Arctic societies and for sustainable economic development. This need is especially pressing in Greenland, where climate changes are amongst the most pronounced of anywhere in the Arctic. Ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet and from glaciers and ice caps has increased since the 1980s and consequently the proglacial parts of Greenland have expanded rapidly. Here we determine proglacial land cover changes at 30 m spatial resolution across Greenland during the last three decades. Besides the vastly decreased ice cover (− 28,707 km2 ± 9767 km2), we find a doubling in total areal coverage of vegetation (111% ± 13%), a quadrupling in wetlands coverage (380% ± 29%), increased meltwater (15% ± 15%), decreased bare bedrock (− 16% ± 4%) and increased coverage of fine unconsolidated sediment (4% ± 13%). We identify that land cover change is strongly associated with the difference in the number of positive degree days, especially above 6 °C between the 1980s and the present day. Contrastingly, absolute temperature increase has a negligible association with land cover change. We explain that these land cover changes represent local rapid and intense geomorphological activity that has profound consequences for land surface albedo, greenhouse gas emissions, landscape stability and sediment delivery, and biogeochemical processes.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Climate change; Climate sciences; Cryospheric science; Environmental impact; Environmental sciences; Geomorphology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > River Basin Processes & Management (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Centre for Spatial Analysis & Policy (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Mar 2024 10:24 |
Last Modified: | 05 Mar 2024 10:24 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-52124-1 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Research |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41598-024-52124-1 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:209855 |