Jennifer Watts

Woodwell Climate Research Center | WHRC

The northern terrestrial net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) is contingent on inputs from vegetation gross primary productivity (GPP) to offset ecosystem respiration (Reco) of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emissions, but an effective framework 5 to monitor the regional Arctic NECB is lacking. We modified a terrestrial carbon flux (TCF) mod...

Montana's Golden Triangle region has been identified for its potential to sequester carbon dioxide into soil organic matter. Farmers enrolled in a pilot sequestration program will use management techniques such as conservation tillage, crop intensity, and conservation reserve to optimize carbon sequestration. The purpose of this study was to develo...

Conservation tillage management has been advocated for carbon sequestration and soil quality preservation purposes. Past satellite image analyses have had difficulty in differentiating between no-till (NT) and minimal tillage (MT) conservation classes due to similarities in surface residues, and may have been restricted by the availability of cloud...

We used an object-oriented approach in conjunction with the Random Forest algorithm to classify agricultural practices, including tillage (till or no-till (NT)), crop intensity, and grassland-based conservation reserve (CR). The object-oriented approach allowed for per-field classifications and the incorporation of contextual elements in addition t...

Arctic carbon emissions from thawing permafrost will accelerate the pace of global climate disruption and reduce the remaining headroom for direct human emissions before agreed global temperature targets are exceeded—the so-called “carbon budgets” for staying below, e.g., 1.5°C or 2.0°C above the pre-industrial global average surface temperature.1...

The permafrost region contains a significant portion of the world's soil organic carbon, and its thawing, driven by accelerated Arctic warming, could lead to the substantial release of greenhouse gases, potentially disrupting the global climate system. Accurate predictions of carbon cycling in permafrost ecosystems hinge on the robust calibration o...

Dryland ecosystems cover 40% of our planet's land surface, support billions of people, and are responding rapidly to climate and land use change. These expansive systems also dominate core aspects of Earth's climate, storing and exchanging vast amounts of water, carbon, and energy with the atmosphere. Despite their indispensable ecosystem services...

Understanding how climate change rapidly alters the Arctic is paramount, given the potential to mobilize more than 1600 Pg of organic carbon sequestered in its permafrost, peatlands, and frozen soils. Nevertheless, data prior to satellite remote sensing are sparse in space and time, with multi-decadal records existing at only a few locations across...

Tundra and boreal ecosystems encompass the northern circumpolar permafrost region and are experiencing rapid environmental change with important implications for the global carbon (C) budget. We analysed multi-decadal time series containing 302 annual estimates of carbon dioxide (CO2) flux across 70 permafrost and non-permafrost ecosystems, and 672...

Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) are a form of abrupt permafrost thaw that can rapidly mobilize ancient frozen soil carbon, magnifying the permafrost carbon feedback. However, the magnitude of this effect is uncertain, largely due to limited information about the distribution and extent of RTS across the circumpolar region. Although deep learning me...

The Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, resulting in widespread ground thaw and state changes. Due to the rapid rate and large scale of ecosystem shifts, identifying and understanding Arctic boreal zone changes and feedbacks requires frequent observations across multiple scales. The last decade has witnessed significant inc...

Accelerated warming of the Arctic can affect the global climate system by thawing permafrost and exposing organic carbon in soils to decompose and release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We used a process-based biosphere model (DVM-DOS-TEM) designed to simulate biophysical and biogeochemical interactions between the soil, vegetation, and atmo...

Dryland ecosystems cover 40% of our planet’s land surface, support the lives of billions of people, and are responding dramatically to the combined effects of climate and land use change. These expansive and diverse systems also dominate core aspects of Earth’s climate, storing and exchanging vast amounts of water, carbon, and energy with the atmos...

The GeoCryoAI model successfully demonstrates the application of machine learning to quantify and understand the dynamic complexities of the permafrost carbon feedback. We compared teacher forcing and multimodal performance among time-delayed naïve persistence (baseline, linear) v. GeoCryoAI simulations with loss functions and predictions yielding...

The GeoCryoAI model successfully demonstrates the application of machine learning to quantify and understand the dynamic complexities of the permafrost carbon feedback. We compared teacher forcing and multimodal performance among time-delayed naïve persistence (baseline, linear) v. GeoCryoAI simulations with loss functions and predictions yielding...

Rangelands provide significant environmental benefits through many ecosystem services, which may include soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration. However, quantifying SOC stocks and monitoring carbon (C) fluxes in rangelands are challenging due to the considerable spatial and temporal variability tied to rangeland C dynamics, as well as limited dat...

The northern permafrost region has been projected to shift from a net sink to a net source of carbon under global warming. However, estimates of the contemporary net greenhouse gas (GHG) balance and budgets of the permafrost region remain highly uncertain. Here, we construct the first comprehensive bottom‐up budgets of CO2, CH4, and N2O across the...

Wetlands are the largest natural source of methane (CH4) emissions globally. Northern wetlands (>45° N), accounting for 42 % of global wetland area, are increasingly vulnerable to carbon loss, especially as CH4 emissions may accelerate under intensified high-latitude warming. However, the magnitude and spatial patterns of high-latitude CH4 emission...

Significant progress in permafrost carbon science made over the past decades include the identification of vast permafrost carbon stocks, the development of new pan‐Arctic permafrost maps, an increase in terrestrial measurement sites for CO2 and methane fluxes, and important factors affecting carbon cycling, including vegetation changes, periods of...

It is well-established that positive feedbacks between permafrost degradation and the release of soil carbon into the atmosphere impacts land-atmosphere interactions, disrupts the global carbon cycle, and accelerates climate change. The widespread distribution of thawing permafrost is causing a cascade of geophysical and biochemical disturbances wi...

It is well-established that positive feedbacks between permafrost degradation and the release of soil carbon into the atmosphere impacts land-atmosphere interactions, disrupts the global carbon cycle, and accelerates climate change. The widespread distribution of thawing permafrost is causing a cascade of geophysical and biochemical disturbances wi...

The changing thermal state of permafrost is an important indicator of climate change in northern high latitude ecosystems. The seasonally thawed soil active layer thickness (ALT) overlying permafrost may be deepening as a consequence of enhanced polar warming and widespread permafrost thaw in northern permafrost regions (NPR). The associated increa...

Boreal‐Arctic regions are key stores of organic carbon (C) and play a major role in the greenhouse gas balance of high‐latitude ecosystems. The carbon‐climate (C‐climate) feedback potential of northern high‐latitude ecosystems remains poorly understood due to uncertainty in temperature and precipitation controls on carbon dioxide (CO2) uptake and t...

The northern permafrost region has been projected to shift from a net sink to a net source of carbon under global warming. However, estimates of the contemporary net greenhouse gas (GHG) balance and budgets of the permafrost region remain highly uncertain. Here we construct the first comprehensive bottom-up budgets of CO2, CH4, and N2O across the t...

The northern permafrost region has been projected to shift from a net sink to a net source of carbon under global warming. However, estimates of the contemporary net greenhouse gas (GHG) balance and budgets of the permafrost region remain highly uncertain. Here we construct the first comprehensive bottom-up budgets of CO, CH, and NO across the terr...

The long-term net sink of carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the northern permafrost region is projected to weaken or shift under climate change. But large uncertainties remain, even on present-day GHG budgets. We compare bottom-up (data-driven upscaling, process-based models) and top-down budgets (atmospheric inversion models)...

Small water bodies (i.e., ponds; <0.01 km²) play an important role in Earth System processes, including carbon cycling and emissions of methane. Detection and monitoring of ponds using satellite imagery has been extremely difficult and many water maps are biased toward lakes (>0.01 km²). We leverage high‐resolution (3 m) optical satellite imagery f...

Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) are thermokarst features in ice-rich hillslope permafrost terrain, and their occurrence in the warming Arctic is increasingly frequent and has caused dynamic changes to the landscape. RTS can significantly impact permafrost stability and generate substantial carbon emissions. Understanding the spatial and temporal di...

Arctic-boreal landscapes are experiencing profound warming, along with changes in ecosystem moisture status and disturbance from fire. This region is of global importance in terms of carbon feedbacks to climate, yet the sign (sink or source) and magnitude of the Arctic-boreal carbon budget within recent years remains highly uncertain. Here, we prov...

It is well-established that positive feedbacks between permafrost degradation and the release of soil carbon into the atmosphere impact land-atmosphere feedback mechanisms, disrupt the global carbon cycle, and accelerate climate change. Permafrost dynamics are relevant to the global community because the distribution of this frozen ground substrate...

The continued warming of the Arctic could release vast stores of carbon into the atmosphere from high-latitude ecosystems, especially from thawing permafrost. Increasing uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by vegetation during longer growing seasons may partially offset such release of carbon. However, evidence of significant net annual release of carbo...

Long-term atmospheric CO2 records suggest a reduction in the positive effect of warming on high-latitude carbon uptake since the 1990s. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to explain the reduced net carbon sink of northern ecosystems with increased air temperature, including water stress on vegetation and increased respiration over recent de...

Background High-resolution soil moisture estimates are critical for planning water management and assessing environmental quality. In-situ measurements alone are too costly to support the spatial and temporal resolutions needed for water management. Recent efforts have combined calibration data with machine learning algorithms to fill the gap where...

Warming of northern high latitude regions (NHL, > 50 °N) has increased both photosynthesis and respiration which results in considerable uncertainty regarding the net carbon dioxide (CO2) balance of NHL ecosystems. Using estimates constrained from atmospheric observations from 1980 to 2017, we find that the increasing trends of net CO2 uptake in th...

The continued warming of the Arctic could release vast stores of carbon into the atmosphere from high-latitude ecosystems, especially from thawing permafrost. Increasing uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by vegetation during longer growing seasons may partially offset such release of carbon. However, evidence of significant net annual release of carbo...

A capability for mapping meter-level resolution soil moisture with frequent temporal sampling over large regions is essential for quantifying local-scale environmental heterogeneity and eco-hydrologic behavior. However, available surface soil moisture (SSM) products generally involve much coarser grain sizes ranging from 30 m to several 10 s of kil...

Arctic warming is affecting snow cover and soil hydrology, with consequences for carbon sequestration in tundra ecosystems. The scarcity of observations in the Arctic has limited our understanding of the impact of covarying environmental drivers on the carbon balance of tundra ecosystems. In this study, we address some of these uncertainties throug...

Past efforts to synthesize and quantify the magnitude and change in carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems across the rapidly warming Arctic–boreal zone (ABZ) have provided valuable information but were limited in their geographical and temporal coverage. Furthermore, these efforts have been based on data aggregated over varying time...

•The Arctic is continuing to warm faster than any other region on Earth, but key uncertainties remain in our knowledge of the Arctic carbon cycle. •We review the most current knowledge pertaining to estimates of arctic greenhouse gas components and discuss uncertainties associated with these measurements and models. •While the Arctic Ocean is consi...

Methane emissions from boreal and arctic wetlands, lakes, and rivers are expected to increase in response to warming and associated permafrost thaw. However, the lack of appropriate land cover datasets for scaling field-measured methane emissions to circumpolar scales has contributed to a large uncertainty for our understanding of present-day and f...

Arctic warming is affecting snow cover and soil hydrology, with consequences for carbon sequestration in tundra ecosystems. The scarcity of observations in the Arctic has limited our understanding of the impact of covarying environmental drivers on the carbon balance of tundra ecosystems. In this study, we address some of these uncertainties throug...

Soil respiration (i.e. from soils and roots) provides one of the largest global fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere and is likely to increase with warming, yet the magnitude of soil respiration from rapidly thawing Arctic-boreal regions is not well understood. To address this knowledge gap, we first compiled a new CO2 flux database for...

Past efforts to synthesize and quantify the magnitude and change in carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems across the rapidly warming Arctic-Boreal Zone (ABZ) have provided valuable information, but were limited in their geographical and temporal coverage. Furthermore, these efforts have been based on data aggregated over varying tim...

The increase in wildfire occurrence and severity seen over the past decades in the boreal and Arctic biomes is expected to continue in the future in response to rapid climate change in this region. Recent studies documented positive trends in gross primary productivity (GPP) for Arctic boreal biomes driven by warming, but it is unclear how GPP tren...

The Arctic–boreal zone (ABZ) is experiencing amplified warming, actively changing biogeochemical cycling of vegetation and soils. The land-to-atmosphere fluxes of CO2 in the ABZ have the potential to increase in magnitude and feedback to the climate causing additional large-scale warming. The ability to model and predict this vulnerability is criti...

We used environmental metrics developed from multi‐source satellite observations to quantify the global influence of El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on surface wetting and drying anomalies, and their impact on vegetation health. The environmental metrics included a microwave surface wetness index (ASWI) incorporating near‐surface atmosph...

Methane emissions from boreal and arctic wetlands, lakes, and rivers are expected to increase in response to warming and associated permafrost thaw. However, the lack of appropriate land cover datasets for scaling field-measured methane emissions to circumpolar scales has contributed to a large uncertainty for our understanding of present-day and f...

The regional variability in tundra and boreal carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes can be high, complicating efforts to quantify sink‐source patterns across the entire region. Statistical models are increasingly used to predict (i.e., upscale) CO2 fluxes across large spatial domains, but the reliability of different modeling techniques, each with different...

Understanding carbon (C) dynamics from ecosystem to global scales remains a challenge. Although expansion of global carbon dioxide (CO2) observatories makes it possible to estimate C‐cycle processes from ecosystem to global scales, these estimates do not necessarily agree. At the continental US scale, only 5% of C fixed through photosynthesis remai...

The Arctic-boreal zone (ABZ) is experiencing amplified warming, actively changing biogeochemical cycling of vegetation and soils. The land-to-atmosphere fluxes of CO2 in the ABZ have the potential to increase in magnitude and feedback to the climate causing additional large scale warming. The ability to model and predict this vulnerability is criti...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is an important metric of soil health and the terrestrial carbon balance. Short‐term climate variations affect SOC through changes in temperature and moisture, which control vegetation growth and soil decomposition. We evaluated a satellite data‐driven carbon model, operating under the NASA Soil Moisture Active‐Passive (SM...

The contribution of soil heterotrophic respiration to the boreal–Arctic carbon (CO2) cycle and its potential feedback to climate change remains poorly quantified. We developed a remote-sensing-driven permafrost carbon model at intermediate scale (∼1 km) to investigate how environmental factors affect the magnitude and seasonality of soil heterotrop...

The contribution of soil heterotrophic respiration to the boreal-Arctic carbon (CO2) cycle and its potential feedback to climate change remain poorly quantified. We developed a remote sensing driven permafrost carbon model at intermediate scale (~ 1 km) to investigate how environmental factors affect the magnitude and seasonality of soil heterotrop...

Arctic and boreal ecosystems play an important role in the global carbon (C) budget, and whether they act as a future net C sink or source depends on climate and environmental change. Here we used complementary in situ measurements, model simulations, and satellite observations to investigate the net carbon dioxide (CO2) seasonal cycle and its clim...

Observations taken over the last few decades indicate that dramatic changes are occurring in the Arctic‐Boreal Zone (ABZ), which are having significant impacts on ABZ inhabitants, infrastructure, flora and fauna, and economies. While suitable for detecting overall change, the current capability is inadequate for systematic monitoring and for improv...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Recent warming in the Arctic, which has been amplified during the winter1,2,3, greatly enhances microbial decomposition of soil organic matter and subsequent release of carbon dioxide (CO2)⁴. However, the amount of CO2 released in winter is not known and has not been well represented by ecosystem models or empirically based estimates5,6. Here we sy...

Cold regions, characterized by the presence of permafrost and extensive snow and ice cover, are significantly affected by changing climate [...]

Cold regions, including high-latitude and high-altitude landscapes, are experiencing profound environmental changes driven by global warming. With the advance of earth observation technology, remote sensing has become increasingly important for detecting, monitoring, and understanding environmental changes over vast and remote regions. This paper p...

The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 sensors (AMSR) have provided multifrequency microwave measurements of the global terrestrial water cycle since 2002. A new AMSR surface wetness index (ASWI) was developed by analyzing the near‐surface atmospheric vapor pressure def...

A method to assess global land surface water (fw) inundation dynamics was developed by exploiting the enhanced fw sensitivity of L-band (1.4 GHz) passive microwave observations from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission. The L-band fw (fw LBand ) retrievals were derived using SMAP H-polarization brightness temperature (T b ) observations...

Near-surface atmospheric Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD) is a key environmental variable affecting vegetation water stress, evapotranspiration, and atmospheric moisture demand. Although VPD is readily derived from in situ standard weather station measurements, more spatially continuous global observations for regional monitoring of VPD are lacking. He...