The change happens as more vegetation grows in the warming Arctic, and forests struggle to survive against fire and insect infestations in warmer and drier conditions. Scott Goetz, deputy director and scientist at Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, first documented the shifting colors of the tundra and boreal forest in 2005. The project launched its first field research earlier this spring on nearly two dozen separate studies, which range from the changing migratory patterns of caribou and birds to the role of fire as a contributor to climate change. The region under NASA’s microscope spans 2.5 million square miles (6.4 million square kilometers). Griffith is director of the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), a decade-long NASA study that is using satellite imagery to examine the impact of climate change on the Arctic tundra and boreal forests. It’s putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that would have stayed locked up for perhaps hundreds of years.” View From ABoVE “So where fires are getting bigger and happening more often, that impacts the rest of us. “These forests matter to the rest of us on Earth because of how they help regulate climate by keeping carbon in the soil and in the trees and out of the atmosphere,” says Peter Griffith, founding director of NASA’s Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Office. Others contend that the tipping point has already been reached. Some scientists predict the boreal forest may reach a disastrous-and irreversible- tipping point this century and shift from carbon storehouse into a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Permafrost is thawing, and vegetation is changing as climatic zones migrate north faster than trees can adapt.Īlready, dramatic change can be glimpsed from space: The tundra is turning green, while the boreal forest is turning brown. The forest also provides refuge for animals and birds as they relocate from southern habitats that have become too warm.Ĭlimate change is playing out twice as fast in the boreal forest than it is on the rest of the planet. It is Earth’s single largest land habitat, and it stores about 30 percent of the carbon found on the planet’s surfaces-more than any other terrestrial ecosystem. Half lies in Siberia, another third in Canada, and the rest in Alaska and Scandinavia. The boreal, which takes its name from Boreas, the Greek god of the North Wind, encircles the top of the globe in North America and Eurasia. Yet large fires like these matter immensely to the rest of the planet.įires so intense that they consume millions of acres of trees and scorch the soil on the forest floor have become the kind of extreme disruptors that are remaking the boreal forest and transforming its role as one of the world’s great protectors against global warming. That may seem of little consequence to anyone other than the 88,000 residents of Fort McMurray forced to flee as the blaze swept into the northern Alberta city. A monster forest fire that began in early May is still burning in Canada’s vast, isolated north woods.