International Polar Year 2007-2008
To facilitate the submission of arctic social science and humanities proposals to the International Council for Science (ICSU) for prospective endorsement as IPY projects, IASSA has launched an initiative to create a vigorous exchange of ideas, discussion, and active communication. The following was submitted to IASSA on its form at IASSA IPY Facilitation Initiative:

Terry Chapin: Polar Disturbance and Ecosystem Services: Links from Climate to Human Well-being
Email: terry.chapin@uaf.edu

Project description:
The goal of this project is to document pan-arctic changes in large-scale disturbances (thermokarst, fire, insect outbreaks, and forest harvest), their triggers (changes in key plant and animal species, changes in societal concerns), and to assess their ecological, climatic, and societal consequences n high-latitude ecosystems (tundra and boreal forest). Threshold changes in species abundances and disturbance frequencies in response to climatic trends constitute surprises that are not readily predicted by coupled land-atmosphere models. When managers do consider loss or outbreak of species or disturbance occurrence, they usually attempt to prevent them. Recent trends suggest that continued high-latitude warming will likely be accompanied by changes in species abundance and increased disturbances such as fire, insect outbreaks, thermokarst, and potentially forest harvest and land-cover conversion to agriculture. These disturbances have qualitatively different effects on the climate system, ecological processes, and therefore society than do those ecological processes that are more continuous functions of climatic change. Large-scale disturbances have the practical advantage that they can be quantified regionally by remote sensing so processes studied locally are more readily extrapolated to large scales. The program builds on existing research programs in Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia and on global remote-sensing and inventory programs. We choose a pan-arctic scale so we can relate our results to the functioning of arctic climate system and to take advantage of geographic variation in climate and disturbance regime. We address the following questions:

1. How have changes in climate and vegetation affected disturbance regime across the arctic and boreal zones, and how have these changes in disturbance affected climate through changes in trace gas emissions, smoke, and energy exchange? Are species change and disturbance a continuous function of climate parameters or are there thresholds? Do feedbacks from land-surface processes to climate buffer or amplify the initial climate trends?
2. How do changes in disturbance regime affect post-disturbance ecosystem development and future disturbance probability? Are there thresholds in disturbance severity or size that trigger qualitatively different patterns of ecosystem development?
3. How have changes in species and disturbance regime affected ecosystem services on which society depends, and how have human activities (ignitions, suppression, and land-cover change) influenced disturbance regime?
4. How have policies changed in response to recent changes in climate and disturbance regime, and what factors influence the rigidity or flexibility of these policies?

Collaborators:
John Walsh, International Arctic Research Center
Mike Flannigan, Canadian Forest Service
Sergei Zimov, Northeast Science Station, Pacific Institute of Geography, Far East Branch Russian Acad Sci
Masami Fukuda, Hokaido University
Christian Wirth, Princeton University, Jena Germany
Joakim Hjältén (tentative contact), University of Umea


Sincere thanks to the U.S. National Science Foundation for support for the IASSA IPY facilitation initiative.

Questions? Contact Anne Sudkamp at <fyiassa@uaf.edu>.

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 This page was last modified October 24, 2005 by Anne Sudkamp