Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2013
Authors
Heleen de Wit Anders Bryn Annika Hofgaard Jonas Karstensen Maria Malene Kvalevåg Glen Philip PetersAbstract
Expanding high elevation and high latitude forest has contrasting climate feedbacks through carbon sequestration (cooling) and reduced surface reflectance (warming), which are yet poorly quantified. Here, we present an empirically-based projection of mountain birch forest expansion in south-central Norway under climate change and absence of land use. Climate effects of carbon sequestration and albedo change are compared using four emission metrics. Forest expansion was modeled for a projected 2.6 °C increase of summer temperature in 2100, with associated reduced snow cover. We find that the current (year 2000) forest line of the region is circa 100 m lower than its climatic potential due to land use history. In the future scenarios, forest cover increased from 12 to 27% between 2000 and 2100, resulting in a 59% increase in biomass carbon storage and an albedo change from 0.46 to 0.30. Forest expansion in 2100 was behind its climatic potential, forest migration rates being the primary limiting factor. In 2100, the warming caused by lower albedo from expanding forest was 10 to 17 times stronger than the cooling effect from carbon sequestration for all emission metrics considered. Reduced snow cover further exacerbated the net warming feedback. The warming effect is considerably stronger than previously reported for boreal forest cover, because of the typically low biomass density in mountain forests and the large changes in albedo of snow-covered tundra areas. The positive climate feedback of high latitude and high elevation expanding mountain forests with seasonal snow cover exceeds those of afforestation at lower elevation, and calls for further attention of both modelers and empiricists. The inclusion and upscaling of these climate feedbacks from mountain forests into global models is warranted to assess the potential global impacts.
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Authors
Geir-Harald StrandAbstract
Four chapters follow in this book: Background, Challenges, Foresight, and Conclusion – What’s Next. The first chapter, Background, takes stock of land monitoring practices in European countries. The second chapter, Challenges, relates a range of issues encountered with land monitoring as it is currently practised and how such matters can be better resolved through improved collaboration. Building upon these findings, the third chapter, Foresight, outlines the HELM (Harmonised European Land Monitoring) roadmap towards a mature, integrated pan-European land monitoring system based upon aggregated national data which are supplemented by centrally produced base data. The concluding chapter, What’s Next, sets the HELM project and its recommendations in context.
Authors
Geir-Harald StrandAbstract
There is a growing demand for reliable information about land cover and land resources. The Norwegian area frame survey of land cover and outfield land resources (AR18X18) is a response to this demand. AR18X18 provides unbiased land cover and land resource statistics and constitutes a baseline for studying changes in outfield land resources in Norway and a framework for a national land resource accounting system for the outfields. The area frame survey uses a systematic sampling technique with 0.9 km2 sample plots at 18 km intervals. A complete wall-to-wall land cover map of an entire plot surveyed is obtained in situ by a team of fieldworkers equipped with aerial photographs. The use of sample plots with extended coverage (0.9 km2) ensures that the survey also deals with local variation, thus strengthening the estimates well beyond simple point sampling. The article documents the methodology used in the survey, followed by a discussion of issues raised by the choice of methodology. These issues include the problem of calculating uncertainty and a confidence interval for the estimates, the focus on common rather than rare land cover categories, and the prospect of downscaling the results in order to obtain statistics for subnational regions.
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Editors
Geir-Harald StrandAbstract
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