Land cover changes across Greenland dominated by a doubling of vegetation in three decades.

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%

SUBMITTER: Grimes M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10864356 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature