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Biogeochemistry

Long-term effects of permafrost thaw

Nature volume 537, pages 625–626 (2016)Cite this article

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Carbon emissions from the Arctic tundra could increase drastically as global warming thaws permafrost. Clues now obtained about the long-term effects of such thawing on carbon dioxide emissions highlight the need for more data.

Global warming is causing tundra ecosystems to undergo hydrological changes as a result of thawing of the underlying permafrost1 — the permanently frozen soil layer that acts as a barrier to soil drainage. Thawing of permafrost can cause a reduction in soil moisture through increased soil drainage. The effect of these changes on the fluxes of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane) released from the Arctic is of great concern, because a vast amount of carbon is stored in this permafrost-dominated region. But our understanding of how hydrological changes in the Arctic affect net greenhouse-gas emissions has been limited by the short-term nature of previous experiments and available observations. Writing in Biogeosciences, Kwon et al.2 report the long-term effect of drainage on vegetation and CO2 flux by returning, after a decade, to a site in the Russian Arctic that was experimentally drained.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Donatella Zona is in the Department of Biology, and in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92182-4614, USA, University of Sheffield, UK.,

    Donatella Zona

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  1. Donatella Zona
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Correspondence to Donatella Zona.

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Zona, D. Long-term effects of permafrost thaw. Nature 537, 625–626 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/537625a

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