Among many troubling forecasts in the upcoming Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) is the prediction that Arctic tundra will shrink significantly in the future, eliminating critical feeding and breeding habitat for a variety of wildlife species. At an August meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Seattle, Washington, one researcher bolstered such fears when she presented the results of recent computer modeling.
Dominique Bachelet, an associate professor in Oregon State University's bioengineering department, developed the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model MC1 with colleagues at her school and at the U.S. Forest Service to predict how different climate scenarios might affect vegetation growth, carbon storage, soil processes and other ecological phenomena. Their model suggests that within a century, between 77 and 90 percent of the Alaskan tundra present in 1920 will disappear. A cold, dry habitat characterized by permanently frozen deep soil, an absence of trees and a short growing season for grasses and shrubs, tundra today covers much of the state of Alaska and supports healthy populations of wolves, brown bears, wolverines, caribou, mink, lemmings and other mammals as well as millions of migrating waterfowl.
Unlike many ecosystems, “the tundra has no place to go,” said Bachelet, “and it will largely disappear from the Alaskan landscape, along with the related plant, animal and even human ecosystems based upon it.”
