Large contribution of woody plant expansion to recent vegetative greening of the Northern Great Plains

Aim: Extensive portions of high-latitude grasslands worldwide have recently experienced increased vegetative productivity (i.e., greening) and have undergone a rapid transition towards woody plant dominance via the process of woody plant expansion (WPE). This raises the underlying question: To what degree are WPE and greening spatiotemporally linked? Given that these vegetative changes are predicted to continue, we seek to understand how recent changes in vegetation extent and productivity have interacted under recent climate change and anthropogenic disturbance to provide insights surrounding the future trajectory of temperate grasslands broadly.
Location: Northern Great Plains (NGP), North America
Taxon: Woody plants
Methods: Greening was measured as the significant increase in three metrics between 2000 and 2019: leaf area index (LAI), annual maximum normalized difference vegetative index (NDVI), and annual mean NDVI. WPE was measured as the significant proportional increase in perce...