ENRI researchers present and win honors at the IPY 2012 Conference

Last week the International Polar Year (IPY) 2012 Conference in Montreal brought together more than 2,000 researchers, government officials, indigenous people and others from around the world to highlight current scientific findings from the Arctic and Antarctic regions and to provide information that can be used to influence environmental and related policy decisions around the globe.

UAA Environment and Natural Resources Institute (ENRI) researchers gave nine presentations at the conference. Of particular note is Adam Csank's (ENRI Postdoctoral Fellow) poster, "Improving our understanding of high-arctic carbon cycling: seasonal shifts in the age and source of riverine DOC and POC in NW Greenland," which won a second-place Student and Early Career Researcher Excellence Award in the Polar Regions and Linkages to Global Systems category.

Csank has been collaborating with Dr. Jeffrey Welker, ENRI Director and Professor of Biological Sciences, and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, on a project studying the ways in which environmental changes alter the carbon cycle of high arctic ecosystems. Csank has been using radiocarbon techniques to quantify the extent to which ancient carbon (C) is being transported from high arctic terrestrial ecosystems in Northwest Greenland (near Thule) into rivers and streams and then into the Arctic Ocean.

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) becomes progressively mobile in soil solution each summer as the active layer thaws. Csank's findings show that as the summer progresses, the age of carbon in the rivers becomes progressively older. This is direct evidence that ancient carbon is being lost from land to the ocean and that the ancient and modern carbon cycles are intertwined. To date, the oldest DOC Csank has found in the river water is greater than 5,000 years old. As these ancient stores of river and soil carbon become progressively active in the modern carbon cycle, they may contribute to the acidification of the Arctic Ocean. They may also influence the near-shore ocean food web, affecting the entire food chain from phytoplankton, to shellfish, to seabirds and marine mammals.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has been funding Welker's research at this location in Northwest Greenland since 2003.

For more information, visit the Environment and Natural Resources website.

 

The nine ENRI Contributions to the IPY 2012 Conference (Montreal): From Knowledge to Action were...

 

"Improving our understanding of high-arctic carbon cycling: Seasonal shifts in the age and source of riverine DOC and POC in NW Greenland" by A.Z. Csank1, C.I. Czimczik and J.M. Welker

 

"Evaluating the use of Inuit ecological knowledge and western science in polar bear comanagement in the Nunavut Territory, Canada" by D. Henri, E. Peacock and H.G. Gilchrist

 

"Effects of Arctic warming on wolf spider feeding ecology" by A.M. Koltz, J.M. Welker and J.P. Wright

 

"Summer fluxes and sources of CO-2 and CH-4 in high arctic tundra under current and simulated, future climate" by M. Lupascu, X. Xu, C. Lett, K. Maseyk, D.S. Lindsey, J.M. Welker and C.I. Czimczik

 

"Influence of food web on spatial variation of mercury in polar bears (Ursus maritimus)" by H. Routti, R.J. Letcher, E.W. Born, M. Branigan, R. Dietz, T.J. Evans, M.A. McKinney, E. Peacock and C. Sonne

 

"Deciphering results of the Arctic Pliocene Climate Change Experiment" by N. Rybczynski, A.P. Ballantyne, A.Z. Csank, J.C. Gosse, D.R. Greenwood, J.S. Sinninghe Damste and 
A.K. Tripati

 

"Inuit knowledge, polar bears and sea ice habitat" by V. Sahanatien, A. E. Derocher and E. Peacock

 

"Foraging movements of polar bears in relation to sea ice structure" by V. Sahanatien, E. Peacock, C. Haas and A.E. Derocher

 

"High arctic C cycling responses to multiple level of long-term experimental warming & added summer water and landscape observational studies: Findings from NW Greenland" by J.M. Welker, P.F. Sullivan, E. Sharp and C. Czimczik