This is a scanning electron microscopic image of microbes on an Eriophorum root. Eriophorum (cottongrass, cotton-grass or cottonsedge) is found throughout the Arctic, subarctic and temperate portions of the Northern Hemisphere in acid bog habitats, being particularly abundant in Arctic tundra regions. (Credit: Department of Energy, Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory.)
For thousands of years, arctic plants have been taking in carbon and locking it into the soil of the tundra. Because the soil is frozen, starting at about a foot below ground, the microbes that feed on this buried carbon have had a very limited diet throughout millennia. But the microbes are now beginning to chow down on a all you can eat buffet of carbon due to melting permafrost. This is releasing more carbon and other greenhouse gases in its environment than is stored in the entire atmosphere.
According to Live Science:
The permafrost in some of Alaska's most iconic national parks could all but disappear this century, new research suggests.
Right now, half of the ground in Denali National Park's is frozen year-round, but if global warming continues at the current pace, just 1 percent of this land could remain permafrost by the year 2100, according to new research presented here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Not only could vast swaths of the Alaskan tundra transform into swampy bogs, but the melting ice could release troves of the climate-warming carbon locked beneath the frozen ground.
"If the climate continues to warm as it has been for the last 30 or 40 years, permafrost will degrade, and only in a few pockets will you have permafrost," said study co-author Santosh Panda, a permafrost scientist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
Many scientists believe that we are already in a feedback loop and that releasing more carbon into a more and more intense phenomenon.
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted that most of the permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere will disappear this century. Many of the current models predict that the climate in the Arctic will warm by 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (4 to 5 degrees Celsius) by 2100, Panda told Live Science."
In a recent interview with U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Matthew Wallenstein explains how warming will surge as microbes feed on the defrosting permafrost carbon.
NSF: What are soil microbes and why are they important in your research?
M.W.: Soils contain an incredible diversity of life — more than 10,000 species of microorganisms in just a handful! These microbes are critical to life on earth. For example, they break down dead plant and animal biomass, and thus recycle the nutrients contained within them.
NSF: What's the difference between the permafrost layer and the soil you are studying?
M.W.: The permafrost is the soil that remains permanently frozen. This creates a dense barrier that prevents water from draining this landscape. Above the permafrost, there is about 3 feet of soil that freezes in the winter and thaws for the brief summer growing season.
NSF: How does the thawing of the permafrost affect carbon cycling?
M.W.: As the permafrost thaws, microbes can begin to decompose it. As they break down these soils, much of the carbon gets respired as carbon dioxide or released as methane — both strong greenhouse gasses. While we know that soil carbon may be lost more quickly as the climate warms, it is also possible that new soil carbon will be created at a faster rate. We are trying to understand the controls on new soil formation. We use cutting-edge techniques to trace plant-fixed carbon into soils at the molecular level. We then incorporate this information into sophisticated models to improve our ability to predict the transfer of carbon between plants, soils and the atmosphere well into the future.
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