| Principal Investigator: | Varner, Ruth K (1) |
| Licence Number: | 16572 |
| Organization: | University of New Hampshire |
| Licensed Year(s): |
2019
|
| Issued: | Jun 18, 2019 |
| Project Team: | Christina Herrick, Franklin Sullivan, Sophia Burke, Michael Palace |
Objective(s): To combine remote sensing data, field measurements and biogeochemical modeling to improve methane emissions estimates from thawing permafrost peatland landscapes at local, regional and global scales.
Project Description: The aim of this project is to combine remote sensing data, field measurements and biogeochemical modeling to improve methane emissions estimates from thawing permafrost peatland landscapes at local, regional and global scales. To accomplish this, the research team will integrate data on water table and vegetation from remote sensing (satellites, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs)), with local measurements of plants, peat soil characteristics, methane flux rates and microbial communities into an established wetland carbon cycling model. The project involves multiple sites on multiple different continents; because the North West Territories contains extensive permafrost peatlands, including sites from this region is critical for the project. This project aims to improve models of methane outputs from thawing permafrost peatland landscapes, with a major emphasis on scaling our results to the pan-subarctic/boreal region. As such, the project involves multiple sites on multiple different continents, as well as extensive in-silico modeling and satellite-based remote sensing. The research team intend to sample two sites in the NWTs, Scotty Creek (http://www.scottycreek.com/) and Smith Creek. Both locations are existing, established research sites where collaborators are conducting multi-year carbon flux and hydrology studies under their own NWT science research licenses. Utilizing these two sites will therefore allow the team to integrate the data records collected by these collaborators with those that are collected during the two proposed short-term field campaigns. First, a low elevation UAV fitted with a hyperspectral sensor will be flown over the site to characterize gradients in vegetation across locations of intact permafrost and recently formed permafrost collapse-scar bogs. The UAV flight will be constrained within an ~3km by 3km area. The area selected for the UAV flights will contain the locations used for long-term carbon flux and hydrology studies. Second, a temporary 1 square meter quadrats will be selected in 40 random sampling locations within the UAV flight path, and vegetation will be quantified using non-destructive % cover estimates. Within each quadrat ~200ml of soil pore water will be collected using sippers that will not be left in place, and a small amount of subsurface peat (~50 grams) will be collected by hand from the upper 40cm peat soil horizon. During peat sampling, the surface Sphagnum moss over a 10x10 square cm area will be removed and set aside, intact. The impact at each of the 40 sampling locations will be very small, and the holes made during peat collection will be covered up after sampling with the original 10x10 square cm Sphagnum surface moss. No permanent sampling equipment will be deployed by our team. Methane is an important greenhouse gas and has a much higher heat trapping capability than carbon dioxide. The way these landscapes respond to climate change therefore has a potentially large impact on the global climate. The products from the research will therefore be informative to managers and policy makers, and will ideally help those working on the local and regional level make the best decisions for the future sustainability of the communities in the NWTs. The Scotty Creek Research Station is involved in extensive outreach and interaction with the local community (http://www.scottycreek.com/). The research team do plan to maintain direct or indirect contact with members of these communities near each research site, and plan to send copies of any research articles and graduate these that emerge as part of the work. The research team are also very interested in providing a lay-oriented presentation on the research to the community members near one or both our sites (Wrigley would be the most likely location, given its close proximity to Scotty Creek), if such a presentation would be of interest to the community when the team are on their field campaigns. The team will have a presentation prepared if an opportunity arises to give such a presentation. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from July 1, 2019 to August 15, 2019.
