EGU2020-3452, updated on 12 Jun 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-3452
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Carbon emission related to thermokarst processes in wetlands of NE European Tundra

Svetlana Zabelina1, Liudmila Shirokova1,2, Sergey Klimov1, Artem Chupakov1, Artem Lim3, Yuri Polishchuk4,5, Vladimir Polishchuk6,7, Alexander Bogdanov4, Ildar Muratov4, Frederic Guerin2, Jan Karlsson8, and Oleg Pokrovsky2
Svetlana Zabelina et al.
  • 1N.Laverov Federal Center for Integrated Arctic Research RAS, Freshwater and marine ecosystems laboratory, Arkhangelsk, Russian Federation (svetzabelina@gmail.com)
  • 2Geoscience and Environment Toulouse, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France (oleg.pokrovski@get.omp.eu)
  • 3BIO-GEO-CLIM Laboratory, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia (bi.a.lim.artem@stud.tsu.ru)
  • 4Ugra Research Institute of Information Technology, Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia
  • 5Institute of Petroleum Chemistry, SB RAS, Tomsk, Russia
  • 6Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russia
  • 7Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems, SB RAS, Tomsk, Russia
  • 8Climate Impacts Research Centre (CIRC), Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, Sweden

Emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) from inland waters is recognized as highly important and understudied part of terrestrial carbon (C) biogeochemical cycle. These emissions are still poorly quantified in permafrost regions containing a vast amount of surface C in frozen peatlands. This is especially true for NE European peatlands, located within sporadic to discontinuous permafrost zone which is highly vulnerable to thaw. For a first quantification of the C emission from lentic waters of the Bolshezemelskaya Tundra (BZT, 200,000 km²), we measured CO2 and CH4 concentrations and fluxes to the atmosphere in 98 depressions, thaw ponds and thermokarst lakes ranging from 0.5 to 5x106 m² in size. The CO2 fluxes decreased by an order of magnitude when lake size increased by > 3 orders of magnitude, while CH4 fluxes showed large variability that were not related to lake size By using a combination of Landsat-8 and GeoEye-1 images we found that lakes cover 4% of BZT, and calculated the overall C emission (CO2+CH4) from the lakes of the territory to 3.8 Tg C y-1 (99% C-CO2, 1% C-CH4). Large lakes (> 10,000 m²) dominated GHG emissions whereas small thaw ponds (< 1000 m²) had a minor contribution to overall lake surface area (< 2%) and GHG emission (< 5 % of CO2; < 20% of CH4). The results suggest that, if permafrost thaw in NE Europe leads to the disappearance of large thermokarst lakes and formation of new small thaw ponds and depressions, this will decrease GHG emission from lentic waters of this region. However, due to temporal and spatial variations of C fluxes, the uncertainties on areal GHG emission are at least one order of magnitude in small thaw ponds and a factor of 3 to 5 in thermokarst lakes.

This work was supported by the State Task AAAA-A18-118012390200-5, RFBR grant No. 18-05-70087 “Arctic Resources”, 19-07-00282, 18-45-860002, 18-45-703001 and 18-47-700001, and the Swedish Research Council (grant no. 2016-05275).

How to cite: Zabelina, S., Shirokova, L., Klimov, S., Chupakov, A., Lim, A., Polishchuk, Y., Polishchuk, V., Bogdanov, A., Muratov, I., Guerin, F., Karlsson, J., and Pokrovsky, O.: Carbon emission related to thermokarst processes in wetlands of NE European Tundra, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-3452, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-3452, 2020

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