Impact of Climate Change on Arctic Vegetation: A Review

The climate change and global warming due to various anthropogenic and natural factors disturbs the ecosystem structure and functions. The unstoppable emissions of GHGs (greenhouse gases) has resulted alteration in vegetations types, compositions that affects overall biodiversity and related ecosystem services. Arctic vegetations maintain ecosystem structure and processes in the temperate and cold regions of the world. These vegetations comprise diversified flora and fauna that maintain ecological stability by providing tangible and intangible ecosystem services. However, changing climates and extreme weather affects overall parameters of arctic vegetations which is major concern today. Change in plant communities, phonological, reproductive changes along with vegetational shifting are peculiar impacts that faces by climate change and global warming phenomenon. The impact of climate change includes soil health, quality, fertility, SOC (soil organic carbon) pools, sequestration rate, rhizosphere biology, nutrient use efficiency, resource availability and nutrient cycling processes, etc. In lieu of above, this paper gives a full insight about arctic vegetations, it origin, evolutions and biodiversity in the world. Impact of climate change on various vegetational attributes, parameters and soils are also discussed in this paper.

Keywords: Arctic vegetation, climate change, GHGs, SOC pools, phenology, nutrient cycling, vegetational attributes.