Global warming is rapidly changing cold regions and their ecosystems, from Earth’s high latitudes to high elevations. These environments harbour well-adapted yet fragile ecosystems, including permafrost peatlands and Arctic tundra, which have acted as natural sinks of carbon for millennia. This may be changing with climate warming, which is most pronounced at high latitudes and during wintertime. Warming induced snow cover loss, rain-on-snow events, widespread permafrost thaw and thermokarst formation, and other related phenomena, are transforming these ecosystems, causing drastic shifts in their biogeochemistry, hydrology, ecology, and morphology.
Most prior research on cold region ecosystems has focused on the growing season, even though plant and microbial activity, and biogeochemical turnover, continue under snow cover and sub-zero temperatures – affecting plant productivity, phenology and diversity year-round. Permafrost peatlands are vital components of the northern hydrological system and act as sources of carbon, nutrients and potential contaminants to aquatic ecosystems, but such linkages between the terrestrial and aquatic domain also remain understudied. Establishing both winter baselines and responses to climate warming is critical to gain a comprehensive understanding of high latitude and Alpine ecosystems year-round, their vulnerability to climate change, and to accurately project future environmental changes.
The goal of this session is to facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion on the dynamics of cold region ecosystems under a rapidly changing climate. We aim to bring together varied perspectives from researchers working on biogeochemistry, microbiology and plant-soil processes. We welcome studies focusing on observational, experimental, remote sensing and modelling approaches to understand plant and microbial functioning, biogeochemical cycling, ecosystem disturbances, export to aquatic systems, and associated impacts during the growing season and non-growing season – emphasizing responses to changing seasonality and climatic regimes.