Modern Methane Cycle in Permafrost Environments of the Lena Delta, Siberia
Samoylov Island
Funding
BMBF (1998-2002, 2003-2006); AWI
Cooperation
Christian Knoblauch & Eva-Maria Pfeiffer
Biogeochemistry, Soil Science
Institute of Soil Science
University of Hamburg, Germany
Michael Grigoriev & Victor Kunitsky
Geochryology
Permafrost Institute, SB-RAS
Yakutsk, Russia
Svetlana Evgrafova & Irina Grodnitskaya
Microbial Community Analyses
Sukachev Institute of Forest, SB-RAS
Krasnoyarsk, Russia
Background
The widely distributed wet lowlands of the periglacial regions are natural sources of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. Compared to other regions of the world, the contribution of the circum-arctic permafrost areas to the atmospheric trace gas budget is still quite unknown. In permafrost soils enormous quantities of organic carbon are stored due to the climatic conditions of periglacial permafrost landscapes, which have been continuously frozen since the beginning of the cooling of the poles. This carbon pool plays an important role for the reconstruction of former environmental changes and the prediction of future climatic influenced processes. Especially the carbon fixation in permafrost soils and the release of climate relevant trace gases like methane and carbon dioxide due to the carbon decomposition are important for the global carbon budget, especially the Arctic methane cycle. Since substantial parts of the carbon conversion are catalyzed exclusively by microorganisms, the determination of soil properties and climatic conditions as well as the knowledge of the function and composition of the microbial communities is fundamental for understanding the carbon cycle of permafrost environments.
Outcomes
9 Cruse reports for the period 1999 – 2007 in Reports on Polar and Marine Research, Nos.: 315; 354; 388; 426; 466; 489; 539; 550; 566 (www.awi.de/de/infrastruktur/bibliothek/awi_periodika/berichte_zur_polar_und_meeresforschung)
Liebner S., Rublack K., Stuehrmann T. and Wagner D. (2009) Diversity of aerobic methanotrophic bacteria in a permafrost active layer soil of the Lena Delta, Siberia. Microbial Ecology 57, 25-35.
Schneider J., Grosse G. and Wagner D. (2009) Land cover classification of tundra environments in the Arctic Lena Delta based on Landsat 7 ETM+ data and its application for upscaling of methane emissions. Remote Sensing of Environment 113, 380-391.
Wagner D., Kobabe S. and Liebner S. (2009) Bacterial community structure and carbon turnover in permafrost-affected soils of the Lena Delta. Canadian Journal of Microbiology 55, 73-83.
Wagner D. and Liebner S. (2009) Global warming and carbon dynamics in permafrost soils: methane production and oxidation. In: Margesin R. (ed.) Permafrost soils. Soil Biology 16. Springer, Berlin, 219-236.
Liebner S., Harder J. and Wagner, D. (2008) Bacterial diversity and community structure in polygonal tundra soils from Samoylov Island, Lena Delta, Siberia. International Microbiology 11, 195-202.
Wagner D. (2008) Microbial communities and processes in Arctic permafrost environments. In: Dion P. and Nautiyal C.S. (eds.): Microbiology of extreme soils, Soil Biology 13, Springer, Berlin, 133-154.
Wagner D., Koch K., Gattinger A. and Lipski A. (2008) Methane cycle in terrestrial and submarine permafrost deposits of the Laptev Sea region. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Permafrost, Fairbanks, Alaska, June 29 - July 3, Fairbanks, Alaska, Vol. 2, 1875-1880.
Wille C., Kutzbach L., Sachs T., Wagner D. and Pfeiffer E.-M. (2008) Methane emission from Siberian Arctic polygonal tundra: eddy covariance measurements and modeling. Global Change Biology 14, 1395-1408.
Ganzert L., Jurgens G., Münster U. and Wagner D. (2007) Methanogenic communities in permafrost-affected soils of the Laptev Sea coast, Siberian Arctic, characterized by 16S rRNA gene fingerprints. FEMS Microbiology Ecology 59, 476-488.
Liebner S. and Wagner D. (2007) Abundance, distribution and potential activity of methane oxidising bacteria in permafrost soils from the Lena Delta, Siberia. Environmental Microbiology 9, 107-117
Wagner, D. (2007) Microbial perspectives of the methane cycle in permafrost ecosystems in the eastern Siberian Arctic: Implications for the global methane budget. Habilitation, University Potsdam, pp. 246.
Wagner D., Gattinger A., Embacher A., Pfeiffer E.-M., Schloter M. and Lipski A. (2007) Methanogenic activity and biomass in Holocene permafrost deposits of the Lena Delta, Siberian Arctic and its implication for the global methane budget. Global Change Biology 13, 1089-1099.
Wagner D., Lipski A., Embacher A. and Gattinger A. (2005) Methane fluxes in extreme permafrost habitats of the Lena Delta: effects of microbial community structure and organic matter quality. Environmental Microbiology 7, 1582-1592.
Fiedler S., Wagner D., Kutzbach L. and Pfeiffer E.-M. (2004) Element redistribution along hydraulic and redox gradients of low-centered polygons, Lena Delta, Northern Siberia. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 68, 1002-1011.
Kutzbach L., Wagner D. and Pfeiffer E.-M. (2004.) Effects of microrelief and vegetation on methane emission from wet polygonal tundra, Lena Delta, Northern Siberia. Biogeochem. 69, 341-362.
Kobabe S., Wagner D. and Pfeiffer E.-M. (2004) Characterization of microbial community composition of a Siberian tundra soil by fluorescence in situ hybridization. FEMS Microbiol. Ecol. 50, 13-23.
Wagner D., Kobabe S., Pfeiffer E.-M. and Hubberten H.-W. (2003a) Microbial controls on methane fluxes from a polygonal tundra of the Lena Delta, Siberia. Permafrost Periglac. Process. 14, 173-185.
Wagner D., Wille C., Kobabe S. and Pfeiffer E.-M. (2003b) Simulation of freezing thawing cycles in a permafrost microcosm for assessing microbial methane production under extreme conditions. Permafrost Periglac. Process. 14, 367-374.