A brief overview of the ongoing climatic and environmental changes in Northern Eurasia serves as an editorial introduction to this, the second, special Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI) focus issue of Environmental Research Letters. Climatic changes in Northern Eurasia over the last hundred years are reflected in numerous atmospheric and terrestrial variables. Many of these are noticeably significant above the confidence level for 'weather' or other (fire regime, ecosystem change) noise and thus should be further investigated in order to adapt to their impacts. In this focus issue, we introduce assorted studies of different aspects of contemporary change in Northern Eurasia. Most of these have been presented at one of the NEESPI workshops (for more information see neespi.org) and/or American Geophysical Union and European Geosciences Union NEESPI open sessions during the past year. These studies are diverse, representing the diversity of climates and ecosystems across Northern Eurasia. Some of these are focused on smaller spatial scales and/or address only specific aspects of the global change implications across the subcontinent. But the feeling (and observational evidence) that these changes have already been quite rapid and can have global implications inspires us to bring this suite of papers to the readers' attention.

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Focus on Climatic and Environmental Change in Northern Eurasia Contents

Preface

Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative
Pavel Groisman and Amber J Soja

Editorial

Siberia integrated regional study: Multidisciplinary investigations of interrelation between Siberia environment dynamics and global climate change
E P Gordov and E A Vaganov

Studies of the energy and water cycles in Northern Eurasia

Comparison and evaluation of gridded radiation products across northern Eurasia
T J Troy and E F Wood

Reanalysis data underestimate significant changes in growing season weather in Kazakhstan
C K Wright, K M de Beurs, Z K Akhmadieva, P Y Groisman and G M Henebry

Climate change in Inner Mongolia from 1955 to 2005—trends at regional, biome and local scales
N Lu, B Wilske, J Ni, R John and J Chen

Application of the Snowmelt Runoff model in the Kuban river basin using MODIS satellite images
M V Georgievsky

Record Russian river discharge in 2007 and the limits of analysis
A I Shiklomanov and R B Lammers

Paleoclimatic reconstructions for the south of Valdai Hills (European Russia) as paleo-analogs of possible regional vegetation changes under global warming
E Novenko, A Olchev, O Desherevskaya and I Zuganova

Diagnosis of the record discharge of Arctic-draining Eurasian rivers in 2007
Michael A Rawlins, Mark C Serreze, Ronny Schroeder, Xiangdong Zhang and Kyle C McDonald

Studies of the cryosphere in Northern Eurasia

Groundwater storage changes in arctic permafrost watersheds from GRACE and in situ measurements
Reginald R Muskett and Vladimir E Romanovsky

Changes in snow cover over Northern Eurasia in the last few decades
O N Bulygina, V N Razuvaev and N N Korshunova

Modeling sub-sea permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf: the Dmitry Laptev Strait
D Nicolsky and N Shakhova

Snow cover basal ice layer changes over Northern Eurasia since 1966
Olga N Bulygina, Pavel Ya Groisman, Vyacheslav N Razuvaev and Vladimir F Radionov

Snow cover and permafrost evolution in Siberia as simulated by the MGO regional climate model in the 20th and 21st centuries
I M Shkolnik, E D Nadyozhina, T V Pavlova, E K Molkentin and A A Semioshina

Studies of the biosphere in Northern Eurasia

The influence of regional surface soil moisture anomalies on forest fires in Siberia observed from satellites
A Bartsch, H Balzter and C George

Change and persistence in land surface phenologies of the Don and Dnieper river basins
V Kovalskyy and G M Henebry

Effects of climatic changes on carbon dioxide and water vapor fluxes in boreal forest ecosystems of European part of Russia
A Olchev, E Novenko, O Desherevskaya, K Krasnorutskaya and J Kurbatova

The effects of climate, permafrost and fire on vegetation change in Siberia in a changing climate
N M Tchebakova, E Parfenova and A J Soja

An image-based inventory of the spatial structure of West Siberian wetlands
A Peregon, S Maksyutov and Y Yamagata

Modeling of the carbon dioxide fluxes in European Russia peat bogs
J Kurbatova, C Li, F Tatarinov, A Varlagin, N Shalukhina and A Olchev

Feedbacks of windthrow for Norway spruce and Scots pine stands under changing climate
O Panferov, C Doering, E Rauch, A Sogachev and B Ahrends

Reconstruction and prediction of climate and vegetation change in the Holocene in the Altai–Sayan mountains, Central Asia
N M Tchebakova, T A Blyakharchuk and E I Parfenova

Simulating the effects of soil organic nitrogen and grazing on arctic tundra vegetation dynamics on the Yamal Peninsula, Russia
Qin Yu, Howard Epstein and Donald Walker

Possible decline of the carbon sink in the Mongolian Plateau during the 21st century
Y Lu, Q Zhuang, G Zhou, A Sirin, J Melillo and D Kicklighter

The frequency of forest fires in Scots pine stands of Tuva, Russia
G A Ivanova, V A Ivanov, E A Kukavskaya and A J Soja

Lateral extension in Sphagnum mires along the southern margin of the boreal region, Western Siberia
A Peregon, M Uchida and Y Yamagata

Evaluating the sensitivity of Eurasian forest biomass to climate change using a dynamic vegetation model
J K Shuman and H H Shugart

Studies of socioeconomic processes in Northern Eurasia

Comparing patterns of ecosystem service consumption and perceptions of range management between ethnic herders in Inner Mongolia and Mongolia
L Zhen, B Ochirbat, Y Lv, Y J Wei, X L Liu, J Q Chen, Z J Yao and F Li

Land cover/land use change in semi-arid Inner Mongolia: 1992–2004
Ranjeet John, Jiquan Chen, Nan Lu and Burkhard Wilske

Spatial and temporal patterns of greenness on the Yamal Peninsula, Russia: interactions of ecological and social factors affecting the Arctic normalized difference vegetation index
D A Walker, M O Leibman, H E Epstein, B C Forbes, U S Bhatt, M K Raynolds, J C Comiso, A A Gubarkov, A V Khomutov, G J Jia, E Kaarlejarvi, J O Kaplan, T Kumpula, P Kuss, G Matyshak, N G Moskalenko, P Orekhov, V E Romanovsky, N G Ukraientseva and Q Yu

Methods of surface monitoring from space

A bio-optical algorithm for the remote estimation of the chlorophyll-a concentration in case 2 waters
Anatoly A Gitelson, Daniela Gurlin, Wesley J Moses and Tadd Barrow

Estimation of chlorophyll-a concentration in case II waters using MODIS and MERIS data—successes and challenges
W J Moses, A A Gitelson, S Berdnikov and V Povazhnyy

Dual scale trend analysis for evaluating climatic and anthropogenic effects on the vegetated land surface in Russia and Kazakhstan
K M de Beurs, C K Wright and G M Henebry

Satellite microwave remote sensing of North Eurasian inundation dynamics: development of coarse-resolution products and comparison with high-resolution synthetic aperture radar data
R Schroeder, M A Rawlins, K C McDonald, E Podest, R Zimmermann and M Kueppers