ALBERT

Description: We here present lithological, geochronological, and geochemical data from a core drilled in 1999 in the Ivashkina Lagoon on the Bykovsky Peninsula, Northeast Siberia.

Description: Submarine permafrost degradation has been invoked as a cause for recent observations of methane emissions from the seabed to the water column and atmosphere of the East Siberian shelf. Sediment drilled 52 m down from the sea ice in Buor Khaya Bay, central Laptev Sea revealed unfrozen sediment overlying ice-bonded permafrost. Methane concentrations in the overlying unfrozen sediment were low (mean 20 µM) but higher in the underlying ice-bonded submarine permafrost (mean 380 µM). In contrast, sulfate concentrations were substantially higher in the unfrozen sediment (mean 2.5 mM) than in the underlying submarine permafrost (mean 0.1 mM). Using deduced permafrost degradation rates, we calculate potential mean methane efflux from degrading permafrost of 120 mg/m**2 per year at this site. However, a drop of methane concentrations from 190 µM to 19 µM and a concomitant increase of methane d13C from -63 per mil to -35 per mil directly above the ice-bonded permafrost suggest that methane is effectively oxidized within the overlying unfrozen sediment before it reaches the water column. High rates of methane ebullition into the water column observed elsewhere are thus unlikely to have ice-bonded permafrost as their source.

Description: The mobilization of carbon in degrading permafrost is a long-term process and an important feedback upon climate change. Under submarine conditions substantial permafrost warming occurs millennia before permafrost thaws, potentially stimulating microbial communities. How microbial community composition and abundance responded to millennial-scale permafrost warming remains, however, unkown. We measured the in situ development of bacterial community composition and abundance together with temperature, salinity and pore water chemistry along an onshore-offshore transect on the Siberian Arctic Shelf. Samples derived from ice-bonded terrestrial permafrost comparable in age and sedimentation history that had been warming by more than 10 °C over the last 2500 years. Bacterial assemblages identified through amplicon sequencing correlated only weakly with temperature but strongly with pore water stable isotope signatures. They showed a significant spatial variation. Bacterial 16S rRNA gene copies quantified through qPCR negatively correlated with rising temperature, while both gene copies and total cell counts negatively correlated with increasing pore water salinity. Correlations of microbial community composition and abundance to stable isotope signatures and pore water salinity imply that they still mainly reflect the sedimentation history. On time-scales of centuries, permafrost warming coincided with decreasing microbial abundances, whereas millennia after inundation, microbial cell abundance was similar to onshore permafrost. We suggest that, as long as permafrost remains frozen the effect of warming alone on the permafrost-carbon-feedback is marginally even on time-scales of millennia because it has an overall low-level effect on microbial community composition and abundance.

Description: On 26 July 2018, we collected apparent resistivity data (ohm-m) in a sub-aquatic permafrost environment north of the Alaskan coastline at Drew Point in the United States. The data was collected with an IRIS Syscal Pro Deep Marine resistivity system that was equipped with a GPS and an echo sounder to record water depths. The geoelectric cable had an electrode separation of 5 m and the electrodes were arranged in a reciprocal Wenner Schlumberger array. The offset between the first electrode and the boat was 6.6 m. The main goal of the survey was to map the depth to the top of ice-bearing subsea permafrost. The survey started approximately 850 m offshore and ended close to the coastline.

Description: River water is the main source of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the Arctic Ocean. DOC plays and important role in the Arctic carbon cycle and its export from land to sea is expected to increase with accelerated permafrost thaw with ongoing climate change. However, transport ways and transformation of DOC is mostly unknown. The absorption coefficient by colored dissolved organic matter (aCDOM) which can be used to estimate DOC concentration. In this study, we compiled DOC and aCDOM samples from 11 expeditions covering river, coastal and offshore waters. Water samples for DOC analysis were filtered through 0.7µm GF/F filter and acidified with 25 µL HCl suprapur (10 M) right after sampling. Samples were stored cool and dark for transport. DOC concentrations were measured using high temperature catalytic oxidation (TOC-VCPH, Shimadzu). Three measurements of each sample were averaged and after each 10 samples, a blank and a standard (Battle-02, Mauri-09 or Super-05 certified reference material from National Laboratory for Environmental Testing, Canada) were measured to sustain a quality control. Samples for aCDOM(λ) analysis were filtered through 0.22 µm Millipore GSWP filters (Gonçalves-Araujo et al., 2015, Lena 2016, Bykovksy 2017) or 0.7 µm Whatman GF/F (LD10, YS11, VB13, VB14, Lena 2014, Lena 2015) right after sampling. 100 ml filtrate was stored cool and dark in amber glass bottles until further analysis. aCDOM(λ) was measured with spectrophotometer (SPECORD 200, Analytik Jena) by measuring the absorbance (Aλ) in 1 nm intervals between 200 and 750 nm. The resulting absorbance measurements were then applied to a standard equation aCDOM (λ)=(2.303*A_λ)/L, where L is the path length (length of cuvette), to calculate the aCDOM(λ). Fresh Milli-Q water was used as reference. The cuvette length varied depending on the expected absorption in the sampled water (1 or 5 cm for river or coastal waters, 5 or 10 cm for offshore shelf waters). Resulting aCDOM spectra were corrected for baseline offsets by subtracting the absorption at 700 nm, assuming zero absorption at 700 nm.

Description: A terrestrial permafrost core from Buor Khaya in northern Siberia comprising deposits of Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene age has been investigated to characterize living and past microbial communities with respect to modern and paleoclimate environmental conditions and to evaluate the potential of the organic matter (OM) for greenhouse gas generation. Microbial life markers?intact phospholipids and phospholipid fatty acids?are found throughout the entire core and indicate the presence of living microorganisms also in older permafrost deposits. Biomarkers for past microbial communities (branched and isoprenoid glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether as well as archaeol) reveal links between increased past microbial activity and intervals of high OM accumulation accompanied by increased OM quality presumably caused by local periods of moister and warmer environmental conditions. Concentrations of acetate as an excellent substrate for methanogenesis are used to assess the OM quality with respect to microbial degradability for greenhouse gas production. For this purpose two acetate pools are determined: the pore water acetate and OM bound acetate. Both depth profiles reveal similarities to the OM content and quality indicating a link between the amount of the stored OM and the potential to provide substrates for microbial greenhouse gas production. The data suggest that OM stored in the permafrost deposits is not much different in terms of OM quality than the fresh surface organic material. Considering the expected increase of permafrost thaw due to climate warming, this implies a potentially strong impact on greenhouse gas generation from permafrost areas in future with positive feedback on climate variation.

Description: This dataset provides an inventory of thermo-erosional landforms and streams in three lowland areas underlain by ice-rich permafrost of the Yedoma-type Ice Complex at the Siberian Laptev Sea coast. It consists of two shapefiles per study region: one shapefile for the digitized thermo-erosional landforms and streams, one for the study area extent. Thermo-erosional landforms were manually digitized from topographic maps and satellite data as line features and subsequently analyzed in a Geographic Information System (GIS) using ArcGIS 10.0. The mapping included in particular thermo-erosional gullies and valleys as well as streams and rivers, since development of all of these features potentially involved thermo-erosional processes. For the Cape Mamontov Klyk site, data from Grosse et al. [2006], which had been digitized from 1:100000 topographic map sheets, were clipped to the Ice Complex extent of Cape Mamontov Klyk, which excludes the hill range in the southwest with outcropping bedrock and rocky slope debris, coastal barrens, and a large sandy floodplain area in the southeast. The mapped features (streams, intermittent streams) were then visually compared with panchromatic Landsat-7 ETM+ satellite data (4 August 2000, 15 m spatial resolution) and panchromatic Hexagon data (14 July 1975, 10 m spatial resolution). Smaller valleys and gullies not captured in the maps were subsequently digitized from the satellite data. The criterion for the mapping of linear features as thermo-erosional valleys and gullies was their clear incision into the surface with visible slopes. Thermo-erosional features of the Lena Delta site were mapped on the basis of a Landsat-7 ETM+ image mosaic (2000 and 2001, 30 m ground resolution) [Schneider et al., 2009] and a Hexagon satellite image mosaic (1975, 10 m ground resolution) [G. Grosse, unpublished data] of the Lena River Delta within the extent of the Lena Delta Ice Complex [Morgenstern et al., 2011]. For the Buor Khaya Peninsula, data from Arcos [2012], which had been digitized based on RapidEye satellite data (8 August 2010, 6.5 m ground resolution), were completed for smaller thermo-erosional features using the same RapidEye scene as a mapping basis. The spatial resolution, acquisition date, time of the day, and viewing geometry of the satellite data used may have influenced the identification of thermo-erosional landforms in the images. For Cape Mamontov Klyk and the Lena Delta, thermo-erosional features were digitized using both Hexagon and Landsat data; Hexagon provided higher resolution and Landsat provided the modern extent of features. Allowance of up to decameters was made for the lateral expansion of features between Hexagon and Landsat acquisitions (between 1975 and 2000).