Journal ArticleDOI
Impacts of permafrost degradation on arctic river biogeochemistry.
TLDR
A review of recent studies investigating linkages between permafrost dynamics and river biogeochemistry in the Arctic is presented in this article, including consideration of likely impacts that warming-induced changes in permfrost may be having (or will have in the future) on the delivery of organic matter, inorganic nutrients, and major ions to the Arctic Ocean.Abstract:
Over the next century, near-surface permafrost across the circumpolar Arctic is expected to degrade significantly, particularly for land areas south of 70°N. This is likely to cause widespread impacts on arctic hydrology, ecology, and trace gas emissions. Here, we present a review of recent studies investigating linkages between permafrost dynamics and river biogeochemistry in the Arctic, including consideration of likely impacts that warming-induced changes in permafrost may be having (or will have in the future) on the delivery of organic matter, inorganic nutrients, and major ions to the Arctic Ocean. These interacting processes can be highly complex and undoubtedly exhibit spatial and temporal variabilities associated with current permafrost conditions, sensitivity to permafrost thaw, mode of permafrost degradation (overall permafrost thaw, active layer deepening, and/or thermokarst processes), and environmental characteristics of watersheds (e.g. land cover, soil type, and topography). One of the most profound consequences of permafrost thaw projected for the future is that the arctic terrestrial freshwater system is likely to experience a transition from a surface water-dominated system to a groundwater-dominated system. Along with many other cascading impacts from this transition, mineral-rich groundwater may become an important contributor to streamflow, in addition to the currently dominant contribution from mineral-poor surface water. Most studies observe or predict an increase in major ion, phosphate, and silicate export with this shift towards greater groundwater contributions. However, we see conflicting accounts of whether the delivery of inorganic nitrogen and organic matter will increase or decrease with warming and permafrost thaw. It is important to note that uncertainties in the predictions of the total flux of biogeochemical constituents are tightly linked to future uncertainties in discharge of rivers. Nonetheless, it is clear that over the next century there will be important shifts in the river transport of organic matter, inorganic nutrients, and major ions, which may in turn have critical implications for primary production and carbon cycling on arctic shelves and in the Arctic Ocean basin interior. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Seasonal and Annual Fluxes of Nutrients and Organic Matter from Large Rivers to the Arctic Ocean and Surrounding Seas
Robert M. Holmes,James W. McClelland,Bruce J. Peterson,Suzanne E. Tank,Ekaterina Bulygina,Timothy I. Eglinton,Viacheslav Gordeev,Tatiana Yu. Gurtovaya,Peter A. Raymond,Daniel J. Repeta,Robin Staples,Robert G. Striegl,Alexander V. Zhulidov,Sergey A. Zimov +13 more
TL;DR: In this article, seasonal and annual constituent fluxes have been determined using consistent sampling and analytical methods at the pan-Arctic scale and consequently provide the best available estimates for constituent flux from land to the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas.
Journal ArticleDOI
Vulnerability of high-latitude soil organic carbon in North America to disturbance
Guido Grosse,Jennifer W. Harden,Merritt R. Turetsky,A. David McGuire,Philip Camill,Charles Tarnocai,Steve Frolking,Edward A. G. Schuur,T. Jorgenson,Sergei Marchenko,Vladimir E. Romanovsky,Kimberly P. Wickland,Nancy H. F. French,Mark P. Waldrop,Laura L. Bourgeau-Chavez,Robert G. Striegl +15 more
TL;DR: In this article, the vulnerability of the North American high-latitude soil organic carbon (SOC) pool to climate change has been discussed, where the authors divide the current northern highlatitude organic carbon pools into near-surface soils where SOC is affected by seasonal freeze-thaw processes and changes in moisture status, and deeper permafrost and peatland strata down to several tens of meters depth where organic carbon is usually not affected by short-term changes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Reviews and syntheses: Effects of permafrost thaw on Arctic aquatic ecosystems
Jorien E. Vonk,Suzanne E. Tank,William B. Bowden,Isabelle Laurion,Warwick F. Vincent,Pavel Alekseychik,Marc Amyot,M. F. Billet,João Canário,Rose M. Cory,Bethany Deshpande,Manuel Helbig,M. Jammet,Jan Karlsson,Julia R. Larouche,Gwyneth A. MacMillan,Milla Rautio,K. M. Walter Anthony,Kimberly P. Wickland +18 more
TL;DR: In this article, the effects of permafrost thaw on lakes and streams in the Arctic were explored, where the authors explored the effect of both thermokarst (thawing and collapse of ice-rich permaculture) and deepening of the active layer (the surface soil layer that thaws and refreezes each year).
Journal ArticleDOI
Ecosystem Consequences of Changing Inputs of Terrestrial Dissolved Organic Matter to Lakes: Current Knowledge and Future Challenges
Christopher T. Solomon,Stuart E. Jones,Brian C. Weidel,Ishi Buffam,Megan L. Fork,Jan Karlsson,Soren H. H. Larsen,Jay T. Lennon,Jordan S. Read,Steven Sadro,Jasmine E. Saros +10 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review the substantial literature describing tDOM effects on lakes and ongoing changes in tDOM inputs, and identify and provide examples of four major challenges that limit predictions about the implications of tDOM change for lakes, as follows: First, it is currently difficult to forecast future t DOM inputs for particular lakes or lake regions, and our holistic understanding of those effects is still rudimentary.
Journal ArticleDOI
Freshwater and its role in the Arctic Marine System: Sources, disposition, storage, export, and physical and biogeochemical consequences in the Arctic and global oceans
Edward C. Carmack,Michiyo Yamamoto-Kawai,Thomas W. N. Haine,Sheldon Bacon,Bodil A. Bluhm,Camille Lique,Camille Lique,Humfrey Melling,Igor V. Polyakov,Fiamma Straneo,Mary-Louise Timmermans,William J. Williams +11 more
TL;DR: The Arctic Ocean is a fundamental node in the global hydrological cycle and the ocean's thermohaline circulation as discussed by the authors, and its key functions and processes include the delivery of fresh and low-salinity waters to the Arctic Ocean by river inflow, net precipitation, distillation during the freeze/thaw cycle, and Pacific Ocean inflows.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Temperature sensitivity of soil carbon decomposition and feedbacks to climate change
TL;DR: This work has suggested that several environmental constraints obscure the intrinsic temperature sensitivity of substrate decomposition, causing lower observed ‘apparent’ temperature sensitivity, and these constraints may, themselves, be sensitive to climate.
Journal ArticleDOI
Northern Peatlands: Role in the Carbon Cycle and Probable Responses to Climatic Warming.
TL;DR: Satellite-monitoring of the abundance of open water in the peatlands of the West Siberian Plain and the Hudson/James Bay Lowland is suggested as a likely method of detecting early effects of climatic warming upon boreal and subarctic peatland environments.
Journal ArticleDOI
Carbon pools and flux of global forest ecosystems.
Robert K. Dixon,Allen M. Solomon,Sandra Brown,Richard A. Houghton,M. C. Trexier,J. Wisniewski +5 more
TL;DR: Slowing deforestation, combined with an increase in forestation and other management measures to improve forest ecosystem productivity, could conserve or sequester significant quantities of carbon.
Book
Arctic climate impact assessment
TL;DR: The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) as mentioned in this paper is an assessment of the effects of climate change on the Arctic environment and its impacts on the local communities and their livelihoods.
Journal ArticleDOI
Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon to Climate Change: Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle
Edward A. G. Schuur,James G. Bockheim,Josep G. Canadell,Eugénie S. Euskirchen,Christopher B. Field,Sergey Goryachkin,Stefan Hagemann,Peter Kuhry,Peter M. Lafleur,Hanna Lee,Galina Mazhitova,Frederick E. Nelson,Annette Rinke,Vladimir E. Romanovsky,Nikolay I. Shiklomanov,Charles Tarnocai,Sergey Venevsky,Jason G. Vogel,Sergei Zimov +18 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an overview of the global permafrost C pool and of the processes that might transfer this C into the atmosphere, as well as the associated ecosystem changes that occur with thawing.