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New study traces the fate of carbon stored in thawing Arctic soils

As temperatures rise, some of the organic carbon stored in Arctic permafrost meets an unexpected fate—burial at sea. As many as 2.2 million metric tons of organic carbon per year are swept along by a single river system into Arctic Ocean sediment, according to a new study an international team of researchers published in Nature. This process locks away carbon dioxide (CO₂) – a greenhouse gas – and helps stabilize the earth’s CO₂ levels over time, and it may help scientists better predict how the natural carbon cycle will interplay with the surge of CO₂emissions due to human activities. (more…)

A New Way to Study Permafrost Soil, Above and Below Ground

By Guest PostJanuary 6, 2013Environmentarctic landscape, arctic tundra, atmosphere, barrow region, berkeley lab, carbon dioxide, cessna aircraft, climate change, electrical resistance tomography, electromagnetic data, geophysical measurements, greenhouse gasses, ground penetrating radar, large spatial scales, lidar, lidar airborne measurements, methane, microtopography, ngee arctic project, permafrost layer, permafrost soils, polygons, remote sensing device, remote sensing tools, surface topography, susan hubbard, terrestrial ecosystem, trapped carbon

Berkeley Lab research could lead to a better understanding of the Arctic ecosystem’s impact on the planet’s climate

What does pulling a radar-equipped sled across the Arctic tundra have to do with improving our understanding of climate change? It’s part of a new way to explore the little-known world of permafrost soils, which store almost as much carbon as the rest of the world’s soils and about twice as much as is in the atmosphere.

The new approach combines several remote-sensing tools to study the Arctic landscape—above and below ground—in high resolution and over large spatial scales. It was developed by a group of researchers that includes scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). (more…)

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River Buries Permafrost Carbon at Sea

A New Way to Study Permafrost Soil, Above and Below Ground