The NGEE Arctic project is interested in the fate of
active layer soils and permafrost as it potentially warms in the coming
century. So far, however, few manipulative studies have experimentally
controlled in situ temperatures in the tundra. Intended to address specific
hypotheses, scientists working on the NGEE Arctic project from Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have developed a small linear heater that
once inserted into the active layer can be monitored and controlled to warm
soils and permafrost to 4-5 oC above ambient. The approach was
deployed at our Barrow field sites in early 2015 and evaluated throughout the
season. Ori Chaffe and Bryan Curtis are busy this week monitoring system
performance and conducting flux measurements. The team has a lot of data to
analyze, but preliminary results look encouraging both in terms of magnitude of
warming, temperature profiles with depth, and the monitored consequences of
warming for CO2 and CH4 flux.
Margaret Torn, soil ecologist at LBNL will be talking
about the technique and its impact of greenhouse gas emissions at the fall
meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, CA.
