Soil organic carbon storage in a mountain permafrost area of Central Asia (High Altai, Russia)

Autor: T. V. Raudina, Didac Pascual, Peter Kuhry
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
криолитозона
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Geography
Planning and Development
Permafrost
Land cover
Mountain permafrost
Structural basin
Global Warming
01 natural sciences
Sink (geography)
Russia
Soil
Central Asia
вечная мерзлота
почвенный органический углерод
Environmental Chemistry
Climate change impacts and feedbacks
Горный Алтай
Siberian Environmental Change
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
geography
geography.geographical_feature_category
Ecology
Soil organic carbon
Global warming
04 agricultural and veterinary sciences
General Medicine
Soil carbon
изменение климата
Carbon
Soil water
040103 agronomy & agriculture
0401 agriculture
forestry
and fisheries
Plant cover
Environmental science
Physical geography
Zdroj: Ambio
Ambio. 2021. Vol. 50, № 11. P. 2022-2037
ISSN: 1654-7209
0044-7447
Popis: The thawing and subsequent decomposition of large stocks of soil organic carbon (SOC) currently stored in the northern circumpolar permafrost region are projected to result in a ‘positive’ feedback on global warming. The magnitude of this feedback can only be assessed with improved knowledge about the total size and geographic distribution of the permafrost SOC pool. This study investigates SOC storage in an under-sampled mountain permafrost area in the Russian High Altai. SOC stocks from 39 soil pits are upscaled using a GIS-based land cover classification. We found that the top 100 cm of soils in Aktru Valley and the adjacent Kuray Basin only holds on average 2.6 ± 0.6 kg C m−2 (95% confidence interval), of which only c. 1% is stored in permafrost. Global warming will result in an upward shift of alpine life zones, with new plant cover and soil development at higher elevations. As a result, this type of mountain permafrost area might act as a net C sink in the future, representing a ‘negative’ feedback on global warming. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01433-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz: