The greening of the Arctic, i.e. increased vegetation productivity and biomass, is among the most important large-scale ecological responses to global climate change. Arctic greening is expected to increase the carbon loading into lakes, resulting in more-coloured waters, i.e. lake browning. This project will develop an understanding of the long-term coupling of terrestrial greening and lake browning. The project will further explore the ecosystem impacts of browning by reconstructing past algal and bacterial production, community structure and diversity, and their linkages to lake carbon cycling. It will link experts and methods of palaeoecology with those in lipid biochemistry and remote sensing to provide data of simultaneous changes in land cover and lake ecosystems over complementary temporal and spatial scales. The project has potential to regenerate the view of the landscape components that influence future fate of lake ecosystems, their biodiversity and services in the Arctic.

2023

2027