Progress and Accomplishments

The anticipated approach for NGEE Arctic Phase 4 leverages computational, diagnostic, remote sensing, and data synthesis tools to quantify improvements in prediction of climate–ecosystem feedbacks at the global scale in an Arctic-informed version of the land surface component of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). NGEE Arctic Phase 4 will deliver an unprecedented ability to predict the consequences of interacting Arctic processes for the global climate.

The presence and thawing of permafrost strongly control both gradual and catastrophic movements of soil on watershed hillslopes in complex and often difficult to predict patterns and rates.

Nitrous oxide strongly inhibits CH4 and MeHg formation, resulting from the complicated interplay of microbial processes in anoxic soils that ultimately determine how climate change will influence greenhouse gas formation and mercury transformation in the Arctic ecosystem.

NGEE Arctic Tabletop scenarios are facilitating field preparedness across sister groups and societies.

Aboveground, this sedge species transfers recently fixed carbon from blades to newly developing tillers, whereas belowground, fixed carbon is preferentially allocated to terminal fine root tips.

Independent evaluation using process model simulations reveals shortcomings in machine learning techniques commonly used to upscale and forecast ecosystem processes.

From under the clouds to in the clouds: unoccupied aerial systems and piloted sub-orbital airborne remote sensing enables scientists to better characterize the spatial variation in Arctic vegetation composition across scales.

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The NGEE Arctic Rainfall Simulator (NARS) was deployed to study interflow discharge rates following a simulated 100-year storm event.

Strong feedback among soil, terrain, and vegetation properties and snow accumulation that create heterogeneity in thermal, hydrological, and biogeochemical regimes across the studied watershed.

Researchers used remote sensing and random forest models to quantify the importance of landscape parameters including topography, vegetation, and meteorological factors.

Model simulations show that it may take several centuries of warming and wildfire increases for Alaska to become a net source of CO₂ to the atmosphere.

A new study provides insight into our current knowledge of nitrogen fixation by non-symbiotic organisms living in soil, litter, decomposition wood, lichens, mosses, and insects.

NGEE Arctic scientists developed and led a successful workshop in which experimentalists from NGEE Arctic and other Environmental System Science (ESS) projects ran the E3SM Land Model (ELM).

A new algorithm was developed to generate high–spatiotemporal resolution estimates of snow-covered area using commercial satellite imagery.

Integrating geophysics with topographic and multispectral data into a machine learning classifier is a promising approach for mapping the distribution of near-surface permafrost in regions of discontinuous permafrost. 

The ESS community generates a variety of multidisciplinary data, and the purpose of the reporting formats is to create a level of consistency that will allow for better integration and analysis of data. 

NGEE Arctic prepared a science activities report highlighting the results and conclusions of its recent snow campaign for the Kougarok Hillslope field site owned by Mary’s Igloo Native Corporation (MINC).

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A large-scale sequencing effort explored microbial life in soils and permafrost of Barrow Environmental Observatory.

Synchrotron radiation-based Fourier transform infrared spectral imaging shines light to microbial metabolism and soil chemistry of Arctic permafrost.

Simulations of coupled carbon and Fe cycling show that the effect of Fe on CH₄ production varies with substrate availability.

Ecosys, a process-rich terrestrial ecosystem model, reveals that watershed variability in soil temperatures, vegetation cover, and carbon fluxes is driven by near-surface hydrology and soil properties

Fernanda Santos and Amy Breen visited burned and unburned areas at the Kougarok fire site to evaluate the impact of wildfires on soil carbon storage.

Results from manipulative field experiment indicate that both nutrient availability and root traits shift rapidly in response to a single growing season of elevated temperature, but these changes did not result in faster plant nitrogen uptake.

Successful application of the ¹³C label to a tundra wetland ecosystem.

Not considering dispersal and fire leads to overestimating shrub expansion in Arctic tundra and its role as a carbon sink. 

Analysis of CH₄ emissions derived alongside geophysical electrical resistivity measurements revealed that localized hot spots of CH₄ (>500 mg m² d^-1) were observed in two study site locations.

Fluorescence automated measurement equipment (FAME) was installed at the NGEE Arctic Council, Alaska site, and a surprisingly strong signal of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) was obtained. 

The NGEE Arctic Rainfall Simulator (NARS) was designed, built, and tested and is now being deployed to the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. 

An approach combining thermal modeling, Bayesian inference, and soil temperature time series with vertical spatial resolution reveals under what conditions soil thermal diffusivity can be reliably inferred.

NGEE Arctic, along with colleagues from ARM and the Arctic Energy Office host Dr. Geraldine Richmond and her staff to Utqiaġvik, AK

In what was a long-awaited activity, a team from LANL, UAF, and ORNL successfully completed its fifth end-of-winter snow campaign at both the Teller 27 and Kougarok 64 field sites.

Chemostatic concentration-discharge dynamics observed in a headwater catchment underlain with discontinuous permafrost

Observations at multiple field sites confirm widespread permafrost degradation with implications to thermokarst development, hydrology, and carbon cycle processes

Members of the NGEE Arctic team attended the annual NASA ABoVE Science Team meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska

The NGEE Arctic project team represented our safety culture at a ‘Safety for field and work travel’ breakout session at the annual DOE BER ESS PI Meeting

Novel field investigation demonstrates how soil nitrate levels across an arctic landscape are influenced by the presence of nitrogen-fixing shrubs, local topography, and rain events

Novel sensor arrays provide high-accuracy depth-resolved measurements of snow and soil temperature and soil deformation, and open the door for the deployment of dense sensor networks.

Soil pH buffering capacity correlates with soil water retention in organic-rich Arctic soils, providing a proxy to improve representation of pH buffering in biogeochemical models.

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The NGEE Arctic team recently presented our Phase 3 progress and plans to the US Department of Energy’s Biological and Environmental Research program managers.

The accurate representation of microbial functional guilds within ecosystem models is critical for predicting ecosystem recovery on multi-decadal time scales.

Environmental controls on soil pore water concentrations of several solutes are inferred from spatial variability, co-located measurements, and thermodynamic geochemical models.

Localized Fe plaque formation was identified on roots obtained from Arctic tundra, indicating the potential for these roots to release oxygen gas and alter subsurface redox biogeochemistry.

Combining a data availability and needs analysis for parameters with qualitative causal loop analysis helps to identify parameters that are in most need of additional field data.

Deepening of the thaw layer resulted in increased concentrations and age of DOC in surface and pore waters that may contribute to greenhouse gas emissions as warming increases permafrost thaw.

Analysis highlights the challenges and opportunities for reducing model uncertainty associated with estimation of gross primary productivity in the Arctic boreal region.

Isotopic labels elucidate the impact of a single warm growing season on belowground interactions among plants, soils, and microbes.

Regional modeling study shows that twenty-first century climate warming will shift the seasonality of the carbon cycle across Alaska.

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A friendly reminder about the NGEE Arctic Project Data Archiving & Sharing Policy that aligns with the DOE Policy for Digital Research Data Management and the expectations of the ESS-DIVE data center.

NGEE Arctic researchers participated in the Permafrost Carbon Network’s 11th annual meeting this fall

Simulations of permafrost thermal hydrology indicate that thermokarst formation leads to drier tundra but is unlikely to cause abrupt thaw as had been suggested by previous modeling studies.

You don’t want to miss our 11th annual all-hands meeting so be sure to register.

Drilling campaign quantifies bedrock to surface properties and confirms the subsurface structure imaged with geophysical methods.

The NGEE Arctic LANL snow survey team enrolled in a two-day Wilderness First Aid training to improve their skills in responding to medical emergencies in remote Alaska.

Scientists tracked the growth of thermokarst pools throughout the Arctic and found that the amount of topographic relief in a landscape correlates strongly with this signal of permafrost thaw.

Multi-scale, multi-type Arctic tundra datasets enabled the submeter estimation of daytime average net ecosystem exchanges.

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Best practices, a computer package, and hands-on tutorials to guide the application of a powerful technique for prediction of plant traits from hyperspectral data.

Fall and wintertime root and soil biogeochemistry, which are not well represented in large-scale land models, strongly affect 21st century shrub expansion.

Scientists on the NGEE Arctic project find that topography and landscape hydrology are key environmental controls on observed Arctic shrub expansion of the past three decades.

A woodier Arctic will alter the carbon balances by affecting a complex set of soil-plant-atmosphere interactions.

Participants across the NGEE Arctic team participated in Table Top exercises for increasing awareness and encouraging improved safety responsiveness to potentially dangerous field work scenarios.

Model sensitivity and uncertainty varied spatially across the highly heterogeneous Arctic tundra plant communities, illustrating the complexity inherent in model uncertainty in the Arctic.

Combining a climate-flash rate relationship with projections of future climate change shows that lightning strikes will more than double in Arctic tundra by the end of the century.

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NGEE Arctic scientists contributed to a new Springer book on Arctic hydrology and permafrost research.

NGEE Arctic continues to highlight its commitment to creating a safe, secure, open, and inclusive project.

Geophysical monitoring shows that transitional permafrost systems evolve through complex infiltration pathways and energy fluxes, including lateral flow.

NGEE Arctic researchers have updated arctic plant functional types (PFTs) in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) Land Model (ELM) based on field measurements of biomass and species composition across Seward Peninsula plant communities.

Model representation of the use of the end products of photosynthesis, triose phosphates, does not capture the independent response of triose phosphate utilization (TPU) to temperature, is based on uncertain assumptions.

Increases in precipitation under the 21st century warmer climate will hasten permafrost degradation as much as warming.

The Ecosystem Type workshop was held in October and included participation from 60 scientists, students, and researchers from the NGEE Arctic team.

Scientists at UAF developed a spatially distributed permafrost model for the Seward Peninsula, and then simulated present-day ground temperature dynamics and projected those into the future according to climate scenarios.

Topography and landscapes hydrology are key environmental controls on observed Arctic shrub expansion of the past three decades.

A new fast model based on hydrologic first-principles captures drainage from inundated ice-wedge polygons.

Joined by colleagues from around the world, Vladimir Romanovsky documents the current state of terrestrial permafrost for wide areas of the Arctic.

New insights are provided into drainage timing and flow patterns in inundated ice-wedge polygons based on fundamental hydrogeology

Image textural features and machine learning models can effectively identify broad regions of polygonal ground topography in the arctic using panchromatic imagery.

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Opportunities emerge for leadership in the NGEE Arctic project and we welcome Katrina Bennett to her new co-lead responsibilities for permafrost hydrology.

Numerical experiment suggest that reliable projections of air temperature and total snowfall may not be sufficient to understand permafrost degradation.

Multi-year field observations improve process representation in polygon hydrology models.

NGEE Arctic researchers use fusion of numerical models and data to estimate subsurface porosities of the polygonal tundra.

Research shows how individual species can disproportionately impact ecosystem carbon balance.

Snow measurements collected with a UAV and ground-based data collection techniques show strong agreement.

Geochemical and spectroscopic characterization of active-layer soil indicate near-surface accumulation of iron oxides that sequester the nutrient phosphate.

Seasoned by the NGEE Arctic project, scientist gets tapped for a new opportunity.

NGEE Arctic contributed to the Arctic Report Card chapter on ’Tundra Greenness’ including changes in the cover of alder shrubs that impact local nutrient cycling.

Numerous posters, oral, and organized sessions submitted to AGU continue to highlight science and science leadership by members of the NGEE Arctic project.

Scientists from across the country gather for their ninth annual NGEE Arctic All-Hands meeting to celebrate success and discuss progress and plans for the project.

NGEE Arctic researchers found that rim height and trough depth in ice wedge polygons considerably influence the vulnerability of the underlying permafrost, shaping feedbacks which ultimately control topographic deformation and increased soil aeration in t

Shawn Serbin represented NGEE Arctic at the NASA ABoVE meeting, showcasing our science and identifying opportunities for synergy with NASA ABoVE.

A state-of-the-art unmanned aerial system was deployed to collect centimeter-resolution imagery and topographic data of the NGEE Teller research site.

Using a new three-dimensional hydrological and thermal capability in ELM (ELM-3D), scientists at LBNL analyzed the role of snow redistribution and lateral interconnectivity on soil temperatures and active layer.

The role of distributed snow on permafrost distribution along the hillslope at Teller field site

Deep learning models achieve multi-sensor remote sensing fusion for mapping of Arctic vegetation

Impacts of fire on the long-term net ecosystem productivity were modeled across selected sites in Alaska.

Nitrogen fixed within root nodules of alder growing in dense shrublands is associated with higher levels of local N availability. The inclusion of a plant functional type based on this N-fixing shrub may improve earth system models’ ability to capture nit

The NGEE Arctic PFLOTRAN biogeochemistry (BGC) is coupled to the E3SM Land Model (ELM) through a generic interface and the ELM-PFLOTRAN is being evaluated at both point and global scales.

Linking soil geochemistry with carbon decomposition improves predictions of CO2 and CH4 production along fine-scale hydrological variabilities in Arctic soil and permafrost.

High resolution snow data collected from two small catchments in the southern Seward Peninsula was used to identify key factors that control snow distribution, quantify the relative impacts of those factors and improve the snow representation for the arct

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UAF researchers working on the NGEE Arctic project validated the GIPL model and simulated ground temperature dynamics for the entire Seward Peninsula according to the RCP4.5 climate scenario.

The effects of fine-scale topography can be represented in models with coarser spatial resolution through the use of a new subgrid model, thus enabling computationally demanding integrated surface/subsurface hydrology models to be used at field scales

Microtopography in polygonal tundra affects CO2 and CH4 emissions, but landscape scaling of polygon types accurately captures landscape-scale states and exchanges with the atmosphere.

Raised amidst the cornfields and grasslands of Mid-America, this NGEE Arctic researcher has passion and curiosity for people and the plant sciences.

Scientists around the world are working to simplify the vast array of plant species and forms in order to distill general features of plant function, structure, and strategy.

NGEE Arctic researchers are quantifying above and belowground variation in plant functional traits across environmental gradients to inform the representation of plant traits in terrestrial biosphere models.

A field research showed that evapotranspiration from mosses and open water was twice as high as that from lichens and bare ground, and that microtopographic variations in polygonal tundra explained most of this and other spatial variation

NGEE Arctic researchers documented strong relationship between soil moisture, inorganic N availability, and plant N content across the polygonal ground of the Barrow Environmental Observatory

Scientists working on the NGEE Arctic project provide evidence linking decadal patterns in arctic greening and browning with regional climate change and local permafrost-driven landscape heterogeneity, using newly developed decade time-scale remote

NGEE Arctic scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab gave an overland tour of the Seward Peninsula to California’s Governor Jerry Brown to share hands-on climate change research in the Arctic.

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We successfully integrated the Dynamic Vegetation, Dynamic Organic Soil, Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (DVM-DOS-TEM, University of Alaska Fairbanks) into the PEcAn framework to enable formal model uncertainty quantification (UQ), parameterization, and data-

We conducted our first NGEE-Arctic deployment of the multi-instrument Osprey heavy-lift octocopter at the three Seward Peninsula sites where we collected high-resolution visible imagery for structure from motion (SfM) 3-D plant and terrain surface heights