Detailed plant study shows greening of North America's northern edge

The "greening" of the northern
 edge of North America.

The northern edge of North America is getting steadily greener. In the most detailed study so far of plant growth across Alaska and Canada, scientists say that about a third of the land cover now looks less like tundra, and more like a warmer ecosystem.

The researchers report in the Journal of Remote Sensing that examination of 87,000 images captured by the NASA Landsat satellite reveals that Alaska, Quebec and other regions became greener between 1984 and 2012.

Landsat, a project also backed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), provides the longest space-based record of land vegetation in existence.

Read the EcoWatch story - “87,000 NASA Images Show a Greening Arctic.”