An Overview of the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) and Its Relevance to Characterizing Land–Atmosphere Exchanges and Climate Feedbacks

ABoVE is a NASA-led field campaign taking place across Alaska and western Canada, with a wide range of interdisciplinary science objectives designed to address ecosystem and societal vulnerability, or resilience, to environmental changes ongoing and expected in the region. The first 4-year phase of ABoVE is underway, with a focus on ecosystem dynamics and ecosystem services objectives. I will provide an overview of ABoVE, from my role as the Lead Scientist, summarizing a diversity of interdisciplinary research efforts and fostering US-Canadian partnerships with several major arctic and boreal research, management and policy initiatives. Some 75 core and affiliated projects are currently active, including ~500 participants from about 150 institutions funded by NASA, other U.S. agencies, and Canadian and European organizations. Eight core projects were recently added (late 2016) to utilize airborne observations linking field and satellite measurements, with major airborne campaigns taking place in 2017 and 2019. The Science Team is organized around Working Groups (WGs) focused on vegetation, permafrost and hydrology, disturbance, carbon dynamics, wildlife and ecosystem services, and modeling. Additional WGs focus on airborne science, stakeholder engagement, geospatial products, and other themes. All are supplemented by infrastructure activities including data management, cloud computing, laboratory and field support. Although organized by disciplinary WGs, ABoVE research broadly focuses on the complex interdependencies and feedbacks across disciplines. Ultimately ABoVE will improve our understanding the consequences of environmental changes occurring across the study domain, as well as increase our confidence in making projections of the ecosystem responses, resiliency and vulnerability to changes taking place both within and outside the domain. ABoVE will also build a lasting legacy of collaboration through an expanded knowledge base, provision of key datasets to a broader network of researchers and resource managers, and the development of data products and knowledge designed to foster decision support and applied research partnerships with broad societal relevance. A brief overview, status update and recent results of ABoVE activities and plans, including airborne campaigns, science team meetings, and relevance to land-atmosphere exchanges and climate feedbacks will be presented.