The Treeline Ecotone In Interior Alaska: From Theory To Planning And The Ecology In Between

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2003Treelines have been the focus of intense research for nearly a hundred years, also because they represent one of the most visible boundaries between two ecological systems. In recent years however, treelines have been studied, because changes in forest ecosystems due to global change, e.g. treeline movement, are expected to manifest first in these areas. This dissertation focuses on the elevational and latitudinal treelines bordering the boreal forest of interior Alaska. After development of a conceptional model of ecotones as three-dimensional spaces between ecosystems, we offer a historical perspective on treeline research and its broader impact in the Brooks Range, Alaska. Dendrochronological analysis of >1500 white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench [Voss])) at 13 treeline sites in Alaska revealed both positive and negative growth responses to climate warming, challenging the widespread assumption that northern treeline trees grow better with warming climate. Hot Julys decreased growth of ~40% of white spruce at treeline in Alaska, whereas warm springs enhanced growth of others. Growth increases and decreases appear at temperature thresholds, which have occurred more frequently in the late 20th century. Based on these relationships between tree-growth and climate as well as using landscape characteristics, we modeled future tree-growth and distribution in two National Parks in Alaska and extrapolated the results into the 21 st century using climate scenarios from five General Circulation Models. In Gates of the Arctic National Park, our results indicate enhanced growth at low elevation, whereas other areas will see changes in forest structure (dieback of tree-islands, infilling of existing stands). In Denali National Park, our results indicate possible dieback of white spruce at low elevations and treeline advance and infilling at high elevations. This will affect the road corridor with a forest increase of about 50% along the road, which will decrease the possibility for wildlife viewing. Surprisingly, aspect did not affect tree growth-climate relationships. Without accounting for opposite growth responses under warming conditions, temperature thresholds, as well as meso-scale changes in forest distribution, climate reconstructions based on ring-width will miscalibrate past climate, and biogeochemical and dynamic vegetation models will overestimate carbon uptake and treeline advance under future warming scenarios

Eliminating the "divergence problem" at Alaska's northern treeline

International audienceRecently, an increasing off-set between tree-ring based temperature reconstructions and measured temperatures at high latitudes has been reported, the so called "divergence problem" (here "divergence effect"). This "divergence effect" seriously questions the validity of tree-ring based climate reconstructions, since it seems to violate the assumption of a stable response of trees to changing climate over time. In this study we eliminated the "divergence effect" in northern Alaska by careful selection of individual trees with consistently significant positive relationships with climate (17% of sample) and successfully attempted a divergence-free climate reconstruction using this sub-set. However, the majority of trees (83%) did not adhere to the uniformitarian principle as usually applied in dendroclimatology. Our results thus support the notion, that factors acting on an individual tree basis are the primary causes for the "divergence effect" (at least in northern Alaska). Neither different detrending methods nor factors acting on larger scales such as global dimming or an increase in UV-B radiation could explain our results. Our results also highlight the necessity to adapt the methods of paleoreconstruction using tree rings to account for non-stable climate growth relationships as these are found in the vast majority of sampled trees and seem to be the norm rather than the exception

An Early Tree-line Experiment by a Wilderness Advocate : Bob Marshall's Legacy in the Brooks Range, Alaska

... Already in the 1930s, Bob Marshall was working on the question of the tree line and tree-line advance in the Koyukuk country of northern Alaska's Brooks Range. His theory was that trees did not have enough time after the last glaciation to occupy their potential growth range. The seed dispersal mechanism, in his view, prevented a fast advance of white spruce into tundra. He calculated the advancement rate of the northern tree line at 1 km per 150 years .... This was, as we now know, a strong underestimation. To test his hypothesis, Marshall sowed white spruce seeds north of the tree line in three separate watersheds (Grizzly Creek, Barrenland Creek, and Kinnorutin Creek). Here we present the rediscovery in 2001 of one of his plots - Barrenland Creek. ..

Iterative Next Boundary Detection for Instance Segmentation of Tree Rings in Microscopy Images of Shrub Cross Sections

We address the problem of detecting tree rings in microscopy images of shrub cross sections. This can be regarded as a special case of the instance segmentation task with several unique challenges such as the concentric circular ring shape of the objects and high precision requirements that result in inadequate performance of existing methods. We propose a new iterative method which we term Iterative Next Boundary Detection (INBD). It intuitively models the natural growth direction, starting from the center of the shrub cross section and detecting the next ring boundary in each iteration step. In our experiments, INBD shows superior performance to generic instance segmentation methods and is the only one with a built-in notion of chronological order. Our dataset and source code are available at http://github.com/alexander-g/INBD.Comment: CVPR 202

Can microsite effects explain divergent growth in treeline Scots pine?

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Do we miss the hot spots? ? The use of very high resolution aerial photographs to quantify carbon fluxes in peatlands

International audienceAccurate determination of carbon balances in heterogeneous ecosystems often requires the extrapolation of point based measurements. The ground resolution (pixel size) of the extrapolation base, e.g. a land-cover map, might thus influence the calculated carbon balance, in particular if biogeochemical hot spots are small in size. In this paper, we test the effects of varying ground resolution on the calculated carbon balance of a boreal peatland consisting of hummocks (dry), lawns (intermediate) and flarks (wet surfaces). The generalizations in lower resolution imagery led to biased area estimates for individual micro-site types. While areas of lawns and hummocks were stable below a threshold resolution of ~60 cm, the maximum of the flark area was located at resolutions below 25 cm and was then decreasing with coarsening resolution. Using a resolution of 100 cm instead of 6 cm led to an overestimation of total CO2 uptake of the studied peatland area (approximately 14 600 m2) of ~6% and an underestimation of total CH4 emission of ~11%. To accurately determine the surface area of scattered and small-sized micro-site types in heterogeneous ecosystems (e.g. flarks in peatlands), a minimum ground resolution appears necessary. In our case this leads to a recommended resolution of 25 cm, which can be derived by conventional airborne imagery. The usage of high resolution imagery from commercial satellites, e.g. Quickbird, however, is likely to underestimate the surface area of biogeochemical hot spots. It is important to note that the observed resolution effect on the carbon balance estimates can be much stronger for other ecosystems than for the investigated peatland where the relative hot spot area of the flarks is very small and their hot spot characteristics with respect to CH4 and CO2 fluxes is rather modest

Wetland succession in a permafrost collapse: interactions between fire and thermokarst

To determine the influence of fire and thermokarst in a boreal landscape, we investigated peat cores within and adjacent to a permafrost collapse feature on the Tanana River Floodplain of Interior Alaska. Radioisotope dating, diatom assemblages, plant macrofossils, charcoal fragments, and carbon and nitrogen content of the peat profile indicate ~600 years of vegetation succession with a transition from a terrestrial forest to a sedge-dominated wetland over 100 years ago, and to a <i>Sphagnum</i>-dominated peatland in approximately 1970. The shift from sedge to <i>Sphagnum</i>, and a decrease in the detrended tree-ring width index of black spruce trees adjacent to the collapse coincided with an increase in the growing season temperature record from Fairbanks. This concurrent wetland succession and reduced growth of black spruce trees indicates a step-wise ecosystem-level response to a change in regional climate. In 2001, fire was observed coincident with permafrost collapse and resulted in lateral expansion of the peatland. These observations and the peat profile suggest that future warming and/or increased fire disturbance could promote permafrost degradation, peatland expansion, and increase carbon storage across this landscape; however, the development of drought conditions could reduce the success of both black spruce and <i>Sphagnum</i>, and potentially decrease the long-term ecosystem carbon storage

Moisture-driven shift in the climate sensitivity of white spruce xylem anatomical traits is coupled to large-scale oscillation patterns across northern treeline in northwest North America

Tree growth at northern treelines is generally temperature-limited due to cold and short growing seasons. However, temperature-induced drought stress was repeatedly reported for certain regions of the boreal forest in northwestern North America, provoked by a significant increase in temperature and possibly reinforced by a regime shift of the pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). The aim of this study is to better understand physiological growth reactions of white spruce, a dominant species of the North American boreal forest, to PDO regime shifts using quantitative wood anatomy and traditional tree-ring width (TRW) analysis. We investigated white spruce growth at latitudinal treeline across a >1,000\ua0km gradient in northwestern North America. Functionally important xylem anatomical traits (lumen area, cell-wall thickness, cell number) and TRW were correlated with the drought-sensitive standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index of the growing season. Correlations were computed separately for complete phases of the PDO in the 20th century, representing alternating warm/dry (1925-1946), cool/wet (1947-1976) and again warm/dry (1977-1998) climate regimes. Xylem anatomical traits revealed water-limiting conditions in both warm/dry PDO regimes, while no or spatially contrasting associations were found for the cool/wet regime, indicating a moisture-driven shift in growth-limiting factors between PDO periods. TRW reflected only the last shift of 1976/1977, suggesting different climate thresholds and a higher sensitivity to moisture availability of xylem anatomical traits compared to TRW. This high sensitivity of xylem anatomical traits permits to identify first signs of moisture-driven growth in treeline white spruce at an early stage, suggesting quantitative wood anatomy being a powerful tool to study climate change effects in the northwestern North American treeline ecotone. Projected temperature increase might challenge growth performance of white spruce as a key component of the North American boreal forest biome in the future, when drier conditions are likely to occur with higher frequency and intensity