The Polaris Project

• Bunn et al. 2007.Northern High-Latitude Ecosystems Respond to Climate Change. Eos 88, 333–335.
  • A widely held assumption is that high latitude warming will cause increased photosynthesis in boreal forests. This paper calls some of those assumptions into question as it documents declining gross primary productivity in some boreal forest ecosystems.
• Cole et al. 2007. Plumbing the Global Carbon Cycle: Integrating Inland Waters into the Terrestrial Carbon Budget. Ecosystems 10, 171-184.
  • Efforts to understand global sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide have historically been focused on terrestrial and marine ecosystems.  Recent research suggests that freshwater ecosystems such as streams, rivers, wetlands, and lakes play important, yet overlooked roles in the flux of terrestrial organic matter to the atmosphere and world’s oceans.
• Finlay et al. 2006. Snowmelt dominance of dissolved organic carbon in high-latitude
  watersheds: Implications for characterization and flux of river DOC. Geophysical Research Letters 33, L10401, doi:10.1029/2006GL025754.
  • Carbon in rivers is a critical but poorly known aspect of the northern high latitudes. This paper is focused on the Kolyma River and shows the importance of capturing the snow melt period to accurately characterize arctic river carbon exports.
• Frey and McClelland. 2009. Impacts of permafrost degradation on arctic river biogeochemistry. Hydrological Processes 23, 169-182.
  • There are many linkages between permafrost and river biogeochemistry. Over the next century there will be shifts in the river transport of organic matter, inorganic nutrients, and major ions, which might have critical implications for primary production and carbon cycling on arctic shelves and in the Arctic Ocean basin interior.
• Holmes et al. 2008. Lability of DOC transported by Alaskan rivers to the Arctic Ocean. Geophysical Research Letters 35, L03402, doi:10.1029/2007GL032837.
  
  • It has been widely accepted that dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in Arctic rivers is refractory (not bioavailable).  This study challenges that assumption and demonstrates that DOC in Alaskan Arctic rivers is remarkably labile (bioavialable) during the spring flood period when the majority of the annual DOC flux occurs.  Recent unpublished work suggests similar patterns for large Siberian rivers including the Kolyma.
• McGuire et al. 2009. Sensitivity of the carbon cycle in the Arctic to climate change. Ecological Monographs 79, 523-555.
  
  • The sources and sinks of arctic carbon are uncertain but the scientific community is working diligently to improve these numbers! This paper outlines what we know and where we need to go.
• Neff et al. 2006. Seasonal changes in the age and structure of dissolved organic carbon
  in Siberian rivers and streams. Geophysical Research Letters 33,L23401, doi:10.1029/2006GL028222.
  
  • This paper gets at some important questions relating to the age and origin of dissolved carbon in arctic rivers. Importantly, it shows that there is a switch during the year from modern to old carbon in the Kolyma main stem but the source of that old carbon is unclear.
• Walter et al. 2006. Methane bubbling from Siberian thaw lakes as a positive feedback to climate warming. Nature 443, doi:10.1038/nature05040.
  • Methane is a greenhouse gas that is many times more effective than CO2 in trapping long wave radiation.
    This paper closes a critical gap in the methane budget by quantifying methane from lakes in Siberia.
• Zimov. 2005. Pleistocene Park: Return of the Mammoth’s Ecosystem. Science 308, 796-798.
  • Sergey Zimov is a remarkable scientist who "thinks big".  This article provides an overview of one of his visions and the ongoing Pleistocene Park experiment.
• Schuur et al. 2008. Vulnerability of permafrost carbon to climate change: Implications for the global carbon cycle. Bioscience 58, 701-714.
  • Thawing permafrost and the resulting microbial decomposition of previously frozen organic carbon (C) is one of the most significant potential feedbacks from terrestrial ecosystems to the atmosphere. Here, the authors present an overview of the global permafrost C pool and of the processes and feedbacks that transfer C into the atmosphere.
• Sturm 2010. Arctic Plants Feel the Heat. Scientific American May 2010,32-39.
  • This is a popular-science write up of how the terrestrial system changing in the Arctic. Fast, fun read.