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As Arctic summers warm, Earth’s northern landscapes are changing.

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Using satellite images to track Arctic tundra ecosystems over decades,

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a new study found the region has become greener.

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Greening reflects increasing plant growth. Affecting people, wildlife, and the atmosphere.

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Global Change Ecologist, Logan Berner, who led the recent research says: 

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“The Arctic tundra is one of the coldest biomes on Earth, and it’s also one of the most rapidly warming,”

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“This Arctic greening we see is really an indicator of global climatic change”

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This study is the first to measure vegetation changes across the Arctic tundra using satellite data from Landsat.

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Berner and his colleagues used the Landsat data from 1985 to 2016

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to estimate annual peak greenness at 50,000 randomly selected sites across the tundra.

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These Landsat data showed greening at about 38% of the tundra sites across Alaska, Canada, and western Eurasia.

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This study was part of NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE).

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Lead of the ABoVE science team, Scott Goetz says: “Landsat is key for these kinds of measurements”

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“There’s a lot of microscale variability in the Arctic, so it’s important
to work at finer resolution while also having a long data record

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NASA USGS Science for a changing world.

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Landsat is a joint program of NASA and USGS:
www.nasa.gov/landsat www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/nli/landsat