TY - JOUR T1 - Five years of land surface phenology in a large-scale flooding and draining manipulation in a coastal Arctic ecosystem JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/146662 SP - 146662 AU - Santonu Goswami AU - John A. Gamon AU - Sergio Vargas AU - Craig E. Tweedie Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/06/146662.abstract N2 - This study was motivated by the knowledge gap for observing the complex interplay between surface hydrology and plant phenology in arctic landscapes and was conducted as part of a large scale, multi investigator flooding and draining experiment near Barrow, Alaska (71° 17'01” N, 156° 35'48” W) during 2005 - 2009. Hyperspectral reflectance data were collected in the visible to near IR region of the spectrum using a robotic tram system that operated along a 300m transects during the snow free growing period between June and August, 2005-09. Interannual patterns of land-surface phenology (NDVI) unexpectedly lacked marked differences under experimental conditions. Measurement of NDVI was, however, compromised for presence of surface water. Land-surface phenology and surface water was negatively correlated, which held when scaled to a 2km by 2km MODIS subset of the study area. This result suggested that published findings of 'greening of the Arctic' may relate to a 'drying of the Arctic' i.e. reduced surface water in vegetated high-latitude landscapes where surface water is close to ground level. ER -