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Greenhouse gas emissions from diverse Arctic Alaskan lakes are dominated by young carbon

Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 166–171 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Climate-sensitive Arctic lakes have been identified as conduits for ancient permafrost-carbon (C) emissions and as such accelerate warming. However, the environmental factors that control emission pathways and their sources are unclear; this complicates upscaling, forecasting and climate-impact-assessment efforts. Here we show that current whole-lake CH4 and CO2 emissions from widespread lakes in Arctic Alaska primarily originate from organic matter fixed within the past 3–4 millennia (modern to 3,300 ± 70 years before the present), and not from Pleistocene permafrost C. Furthermore, almost 100% of the annual diffusive C flux is emitted as CO2. Although the lakes mostly processed younger C (89 ± 3% of total C emissions), minor contributions from ancient C sources were two times greater in fine-textured versus coarse-textured Pleistocene sediments, which emphasizes the importance of the underlying geological substrate in current and future emissions. This spatially extensive survey considered the environmental and temporal variability necessary to monitor and forecast the fate of ancient permafrost C as Arctic warming progresses.

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Fig. 1: 14C content and concentration of below-ice dissolved CH4 and CO2 by geological unit.
Fig. 2: Radiocarbon content of coexisting dissolved CH4 and CO2 below ice.
Fig. 3: Mean 14C age of dissolved CH4 in thaw lakes interpolated across Alaska’s North Slope.
Fig. 4: Source apportionment of lake-dissolved CH4 and CO2 below ice.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to UIC Science (Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corporation) and the city of Atqasuk for logistical support and access to field sites, in particular A. Danner, N. Harcharek, E. Burnett, K. Newyear and D. Whiteman. We thank J. Chaplin (ChaplinAK Air) for flying and patiently floating. At UC Irvine, we thank M. Crawford, J. G. Mazariegos, M. A. Larios, M. Schweiger, C. McCormick, E. Cirací and R. A. Jimenez for assistance with the equipment and/or sample or data processing, and the KCCAMS staff for assisting with isotope analysis. Funding was provided by the Hellman foundation, UCI Council on Research, Computing and Libraries (to C.I.C.), the ARCS foundation (to C.D.E.), and US National Science Foundation grants AON-1107607 (to K.H. and A.T.-S.) and ARC-1107481 (to C.D.A.). We thank D. H. Mann and P. Groves, who were instrumental in the sediment sampling. We also thank B. Jones and G. Grosse for their valuable assistance in the field.

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Author notes

  1. Jordan L. Schnell

    Present address: Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

  2. Kenneth M. Hinkel

    Present address: Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Clayton D. Elder, Xiaomei Xu, Jennifer Walker, Jordan L. Schnell & Claudia I. Czimczik

  2. Department of Geography, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Kenneth M. Hinkel

  3. Department of Geology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Amy Townsend-Small

  4. Water and Environmental Research Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Christopher D. Arp

  5. USGS Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center, Woods Hole, MA, USA

    John W. Pohlman

  6. Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA

    Benjamin V. Gaglioti

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Contributions

C.D.E, X.X., J.W., C.I.C, B.V.G. and J.W.P. performed the measurements. J.L.S. developed the methodology and produced the figures for the spatial CH4 interpolations. C.D.E, C.I.C., K.M.H., A.T.-S., C.D.A. and B.V.G. were all involved with the field logistics and sampling. B.V.G. contributed to all the work and data related to the sedimentary organic C content sampling. All the authors participated in the interpretation and presentation of the results.

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Correspondence to Clayton D. Elder or Claudia I. Czimczik.

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Elder, C.D., Xu, X., Walker, J. et al. Greenhouse gas emissions from diverse Arctic Alaskan lakes are dominated by young carbon. Nature Clim Change 8, 166–171 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0066-9

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