CARBO-North

The final meeting of the project is to take place at Stockholm University, 13-14th April, 2010. It will be followed on 15-16th April by an Open Science Symposium titled 'Spatio-temporal patterns in the carbon balance of northern high latitude regions'.

The symposium is supported by the EU-funded CARBO-North project and the BBCC (Bert Bolin Climate Research Centre) of Stockholm University.

The full two-day programme will consist of presentations of the project's results accompanied by keynote speeches from renowned scientists working in the field of climate science and carbon fluxes.

PAGES NewsletterThe work of Steffen Holzkämper and Peter Kuhry from Stockholm University has been featured in an article in the PAGES newsletter.

PAGES (Past Global Changes) is a community of scientists whose research is aimed at understanding the Earth’s past environment in order to make predictions for the future.

The research (carried out as part of this project and a previous project called GLIMPSE) looked at stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in tree ring cellulose. The data may help to shed further light on the climate prior to the instrumental data period.

Peat circles
Photo: Tarmo VirtanenResearch carried out in the CARBO-North project has revealed that greenhouse gas emissions from tundra peatlands may be much more significant than previously thought. Maija Repo, with colleagues from the University of Kuopio, the University of Helsinki and the Komi Science Center, measured gas emissions from areas of frost-disturbed peat.

Sludka house
Photo: Sanna SusiluotoAfter a well organized morning in Syktyvkar to prepare the week in Sludka, the Finns and Swedish teams got to the village in the middle of the taiga forest. We met the German team which were already there to study taiga peatland gas fluxes. We greatly benefited from their experience and also had great help from Julia, with her knowledge of Russian.

Rogovaya III camp site
Photo: Päivi Kaislahti-TillmanThe field work trip to Rogovaya III camp did not start as planned. We were supposed to start the trip from Vorkuta using a land vehicle, but that proved to be impossible. So we had to continue our trip to Seida campsite not knowing if the Rogovaya III trip would be possible at all. After long negotiations we were able to get two small land vehicles, which were supposed to leave on 3rd of August – a week after it was originally planned.

Seida field cabinDespite the long and cold winter in the tundra, soil microbes are not having a winter holiday, which means some field work for flux researchers as well. We wanted to find out what is going on under the snow cover, and headed up north to measure greenhouse gas emissions at the tundra flux site. There were three of us on this one-week field trip in January 2008: Irina Samarina and Igor Maruschjak from Komi Science Centre, Syktyvkar and Maija Repo from University of Kuopio.

Khoseda weather stationWhen approaching the Khosedayu camp we started seeing more signs of human activities. A pipeline was the most evident example but there were also many roads and other disturbances in the tundra. The helicopter set down on the ruins of the once flourishing village Khoseda-Khard. The only buildings now remaining at Khoseda-Khard belong to a governmental Meteorological and Hydrological monitoring station.

Malin really likes cloudberriesDeciding on the exact location for this camp became a bit of an adventure when 10 tired hikers and 2 heavily loaded floats were supposed to meet up and agree on where in the humongous cloud of blackflies, spiced up with some mosquitoes, we should stop and make our home for the coming week. In the end we found a place with quite dry and relatively even ground close to a forest patch and with a small path leading down to the river. Although we were tired and some feet, legs and other body parts had seen more glorious days, the camp and a fire were put up fast and efficiently and we got warm food before crawling into our tents to get some rest and enjoy the thunderstorm in protection from the rain.

Rogovaja IPartners from Stockholm, Helsinki, Kuopio, Utrecht, Wageningen, Nottingham, Greifswald and, of course, Syktyvkar were involved in this summer's fieldwork. After a couple of days with short visits at the Lyali field station and Slutka (Forest-Flux-Site) and in Seida (Tundra-Flux-Site), and after we have spent a day in Vorkuta (for registration and shopping), we finally were flown out by helicopter to our first camp.