Cold regions, including Arctic, boreal and alpine regions, are warming at a much faster rate than the global average, putting cold regions and their ecosystems under increasing pressure. These environments harbour well-adapted yet fragile ecosystems, including permafrost peatlands and Arctic tundra, which have acted as natural carbon sinks for millennia. This may change as warming induces snow cover loss, rain-on-snow events, increased wildfire frequency and intensity, widespread permafrost thaw and thermokarst formation, and other landscape disturbances that transform the biogeochemistry, hydrology, ecology, and morphology of the cold regions. Ultimately, these phenomena can trigger local and large-scale climate feedbacks through shifts in the exchange of carbon, water and energy to the atmosphere.
The goal of this session is to facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion on the dynamics of cold region ecosystems under a rapidly changing climate. We aim to bring together varied perspectives from researchers working on biogeochemistry, including greenhouse gas flux measurements, microbiology and plant-soil processes. We welcome studies focusing on observational, experimental, remote sensing and modelling approaches to understand plant and microbial functioning, biogeochemical cycling, ecosystem disturbances, permafrost carbon loss, export to aquatic systems, and associated impacts. Because most prior research on cold region ecosystems has focused on the growing season, we particularly welcome contributions from the non-growing season. We further encourage contributions that aim at a quantification of permafrost feedback strengths, at the regional to global scale, and those that improve our understanding of mechanisms at the process-level.