Environmental Change in Siberia, 2010 Earth Observation, Field Studies and Modelling Advances in Global Change Research Series, Vol. 40

The Siberian environment is a unique region of the world that is both very strongly affected by global climate change and at the same time particularly vulnerable to its consequences. The news about the melting of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and the prospect of an ice-free shipping passage from Scandinavia to Alaska along the Russian north coast has sparked an international debate about natural resource exploitation, national boundaries and the impacts of the rapid changes on people, animals and plants. Over the last decades Siberia has also witnessed severe forest fires to an extent that is hard to imagine in other parts of the world where the po- lation density is higher, the fire-prone ecosystems cover much smaller areas and the systems of fire control are better resourced. The acceleration of the fire regime poses the question of the future of the boreal forest in the taiga region. Vegetation models have already predicted a shift of vegetation zones to the north under s- narios of global climate change. The implications of a large-scale expansion of the grassland steppe ecosystems in the south of Siberia and a retreat of the taiga forest into the tundra systems that expand towards the Arctic Ocean would be very signi- cant for the local population and the economy. I have studied Russian forests from remote sensing and modelling for about 11 years now and still find it a fascinating subject to investigate.

1. Forest Disturbance Assessment Using Satellite Data of Moderate and Low Resolution M.A. Korets, V.A. Ryzhkova, A.I. Sukhinin, S.A. Bartalev and I.V. Danilova 2. Fire/climate interactions in Siberia Heiko Balzter, Kevin Tansey, Jörg Kaduk, Charles George, France Gerard, Maria Cuevas Gonzalez, Anatoly Sukhinin and Evgeni Ponomarev 3. Long-term dynamics of mixed fir-aspen forests in West Sayan (Altai-Sayan Ecoregion) D.M. Ismailova and D.I. Nazimova 4. Evidence of Evergreen Conifers Invasion into Larch Dominated Forests During Recent Decades V.I. Kharuk, K.J. Ranson and M.L. Dvinskaya 5. Potential climate-induced vegetation change in Siberia in the 21st century N.M. Tchebakova , E.I. Parfenova, and A.J. Soja 6. Wildfire Dynamics in Mid-Siberian Larch Dominated Forests V.I. Kharuk, K.J. Ranson and M.L. Dvinskaya 7. Dendroclimatological Evidence of Climate Changes across Siberia Vladimir V. Shishov, Eugene A. Vaganov 8. Siberian pine and larch response to climate warming in the southern Siberian mountain forest – tundra ecotone V.I. Kharuk, K.J. Ranson, M.L. Dvinskaya and S.T. Im PART II: HYDROSPHERE 9. Remote sensing of spring snowmelt in Siberia A. Bartsch, W. Wagner and R. Kidd 10. Response of River Runoff in the Cryolithic Zone of Eastern Siberia (Lena River Basin) to Future Climate Warming A.G. Georgiadi, I.P. Milyukova and E.A. Kashutina PART III: ATMOSPHERE 11. Investigating regional scale processes using remotely sensed atmospheric CO2 column concentrations from SCIAMACHY M. P. Barkley, A. J. Hewitt and P. S. Monks 12. Climatic and geographic patterns of spatial distribution of precipitation in Siberia A. Onuchin and T.Burenina PART IV: INFORMATION SYSTEMS 13. Interoperability, data discovery and access: the e-Infrastructures for Earth Sciences resources Stefano Nativi, Christiana Schmullius, Lorenzo Bigagli and Roman Gerlach 14. Development of a web based information-computational infrastructure for the Siberia Integrated Regional Study E.P. Gordov, A.Z. Fazliev, V.N. Lykosov, I.G. Okladnikov and A.G. Titov 15. Conclusions Heiko Balzter