This page will feature research by ENRI scientists. Each month a different scientist and project will be featured.
A 1 KW turbine is used by Drs. Sullivan, Welker and Sveinbjornsson to power their C02 sensor in winter at Toolik Lake, AK. This study has been one of the first to use wind power in remote locations for climate change studies in winter. J. Welker is standing along side the turbine after the first snow fall in September 2008.
Dr. PaddySullivan (NSF Postdoctoral Fellow), in cooperation with UAA Biology Department MS student, Seth Arens, and Professors Bjartmar Sveinbjornsson and Jeff Welker (ENRI Director) have just reported that winter C02 transfers from the soils in the Anchorage Boreal Forest fluctuate dramatically over winter compared to C02 flows from the tundra to the atmosphere in northern Alaska. The studies are the first to directly compare Boreal and Tundra winter carbon cycling and are part of the UAA Boreal Forest Observatory (http://bfo.uaa.alaska.edu) and Dr. Welker's International Polar Year project at Toolik Lake Alaska (http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/enri/research/IPY/snow_shrubindex.cfm). These findings indicate that episodic warm periods in winter result in pulse releases of CO2 to the atmosphere which may be controlled by activating tree root growth or temporally stimulating changes in tree carbon allocation which would stimulate microbial release of CO2. In the tundra, episodic periods of high CO2 release occur in fall and spring during freeze-thaw events, but between November and May, only small amounts of CO2 are released to the atmosphere.
