The project is funded by Danish Council for Independent Research|Natural Sciences Sapere Aude Research Leader grant from 2018-2022

Climate warming is expected to have pronounced effects on the functioning of Arctic ecosystems. However, evidence show substantial variation in the response of woody plants to recent warming across sites. sDYN will provide new insight on Artic shrub dynamics and their variation across space and time by a novel integration of satellite and drone-based remote sensing, functional traits, dendroecology, and dynamic modelling. The empirical basis for this integration is a unique data set on growth, recruitment, cover, and functional traits collected simultaneously with drone-based surveys at multiple sites across large-scale climatic gradients in Greenland, a large randomly stratified sample of vegetation cover across Greenland, and new cross- and landscape scale mapping of shrub dynamics, and their geophysical drivers (further reading about this specific field site under Field Campaigns). sDYN is expected to provide the scientific basis for an improved understanding and prediction of ongoing and future vegetation dynamics in the Arctic. This project contributes to theme [1] Fundamental Biodiversity Dynamics, theme [2] Global Challenges, and theme [3] Ecoinformatics and New Technologies of BIOCHANGE.