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Mapping Cold Season Soil CO2 Emissions in the Arctic-Boreal Region
Jennifer
Dawn
Watts, Woods Hole Research Center, jwatts@whrc.org
(Presenter)
The impact of ecosystem warming on the Arctic-boreal carbon budget remains highly uncertain. Carbon stored in thawing permafrost soils may be increasingly vulnerable to microbial mineralization and transfer to the atmosphere as CO2 given lessening cold temperature constraints. The magnitude of CO2 loss during winter and shoulder (autumn/spring) seasons could greatly reduce net ecosystem carbon sink in northern latitudes. This project aims to improve understanding of cold season soil CO2 emissions from boreal forests and tundra within Alaska and western Canada by incorporating new information gained from a network of Forced Diffusion (FD) flux sensors and tower eddy covariance observations. This combined database represents 16 FD sites and 23 tower locations across the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) domain. We explore various statistical approaches and information from multi-scale (VIS-IR, microwave) satellite remote sensing and ancillary inputs to extrapolate the cold season fluxes to the greater region. Initial results from a generalized additive model (GAM) show the importance of soil carbon stocks, land surface temperature, landscape wetness (e.g. soil moisture, inundation), and permafrost status as predictors of soil CO2 flux. Our analysis also emphasizes the need for a new comprehensive vegetation map specific to the ABoVE domain that better characterizes ecosystem heterogeneity across tundra, boreal wetland and forest communities. Associated Project(s): Poster Location ID: 50 Session Assigned: Carbon Dynamics
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