Vegetation-Permafrost Relations within the Forest-Tundra Ecotone near Old Crow, Northern Yukon, Canada

Old Crow Flats is a 5600 km2 glaciolacustrine plain that straddles the forest-tundra ecotone in northern Yukon. Continuous taiga corridors occur in the entrenched river valleys, where annual mean ground temperatures (Tg) at the depth of zero annual amplitude at two locations were −3.1 and −4.0ºC in 2013. On the Flats, the vegetation cover is patchy, and Tg varied between −5.1 and −2.6ºC. Annual mean near-surface permafrost temperatures (Tps)...