Permafrost Region Greenhouse Gases

Profile

Climate change affects many northern ecosystems such as wetlands, peatlands and permafrost soils, which store a lot of carbon and nitrogen in organic matter. Therefore, these ecosystems have the potential to enhance climate warming through carbon losses from these soils. However, they also have the potential to offset climate warming through continued carbon accumulation in soils and therefore wetlands and permafrost soils are an important component in the carbon cycle.

Our research group focuses on measuring the exchange of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), and understanding the soil processes underlying these fluxes using observations, experiments, modeling, and data synthesis. We work largely in peatlands, wetlands, and permafrost soils. Our projects focus on carbon and nitrogen interactions, cold-season biogeochemical processes, methane emissions from northern wetlands, and permafrost dynamics in northern wetlands. We hope that by understanding these important ecosystems, we can better understand and address climate change and the role of these ecosystems as carbon sinks or sources in the past, present, and future.

Highlights

13 June 2023

Congratulations to Sarah Wocheslander, who successfully defended her Masters Thesis at Lynköping University, Sweden on June 13. Sarah evaluated low-cost methane sensors for measuring methane at Siikaneva Bog.


6 June 2023

Melissa Laurent’s paper on methanogens and methane production along a landscape position gradient in sediments from the Lena River Delta was published in Biogeosciences this week: https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-2049-2023, 2023. Landscape position was an important control on methane production, with highest production occurring in floodplain sediments.


2021

Claire Treat received the 2021 AGU Editors’ Citation for Excellence in Refereeing for JGR-Biogeosciences journal reviews.


8 October 2021

Melissa successfully finished and defended her master thesis on the topic “Links between greenhouse gas emissions and microbes shift during short-term permafrost thaw under anaerobic conditions.”


31 August 2021

Claire, Johanna and Matthias returned from their successful expedition to the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. They measured methane fluxes from coastal wetlands. The weekly reports of their expedition can be found in the "Expeditions" tab.


23 August 2021

Mackenzie and Katharina returned from their 3-month field campaign in Finland. They installed the long term flux measurements for the FluxWIN project and collected valuable new data for their PhD projects in the Siikaneva wetland complex. Their weekly reports are available in the "Expeditions" tab.


1 July 2021

We welcome Mackenzie in our group who starts her PhD in the FluxWin-Project.


19 May 2021

Katharina published a paper about her master thesis with the title: High levels of CO2 exchange during synoptic-scale events introduce large uncertainty into the Arctic carbon budget https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL092256


30 April 2021

Claire, Lona, Katharina and Johanna presented their work at the virtual Assembly of the European Geophysical Union (vEGU) 2021. Their abstracts and posters are available on the FluxWIN Epic page: https://epic.awi.de/view/divisions/FluxWIN/2021.html


11 April 2021

Claire published a paper with the title: Predicted vulnerability of carbon in permafrost peatlands with future climate change and permafrost thaw in Western Canada https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JG005872


12 March 2021

Claire published a paper with the title: "The role of wetland expansion and successional processes in methane emissions from northern wetlands during the Holocene ",
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.106864


1 January 2021

We welcome Katharina in our group who starts her PhD in the FluxWin-Project.


29 October 2020

Claire and Lona returned from a successful field campaing in Finland. See their FluxWIN Expedition report.

Team member


Dr. Claire Treat (Group lead)

Dr. Lona van Delden (PostDoc) [ Profile page]

Dr. Joshua Hashemi (PostDoc)

Katharina Jentzsch (PhD candidate)

Mackenzie Baysinger (PhD candidate)

Johanna Schwarzer (Master student)

Melissa Laurent (Student intern)