Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Permafrost degradation impacts on soils, human societies, water resources and carbon cycle

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 9-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a consortium of research funding organizations representing over 55 countries focused on support for transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental change challenges and opportunities. It aims to accelerate delivery of the international research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions. This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries. The research teams will work to identify sustainable pathways to help alleviate the increasing and unprecedented pressure on the natural resources that interact to provide sustainable life support systems and essential benefits to societies such as food production and water quality and quantity. The impacts of changes in land management and urbanization will be evaluated to develop sustainable soils and groundwater management options that will help create and maintain sustainable terrestrial ecosystems. The project aims to understand the hydrological, geochemical, geomorphological, microbiological, and socio-economic impacts of permafrost thaw to soils and surface/groundwaters in the Arctic and Subarctic, and their sustainability in the changing climate. The overall objective of the work is to compare sites in Siberia and Alaska with different permafrost characteristics (ice-rich Yedoma permafrost or carbon-rich permafrost peatland; continuous or discontinuous permafrost), climate-sensitivity, vegetation, and degradation types along latitudinal and longitudinal gradients. To accomplish this, the team will study several key small watersheds in Siberia and Alaska. Each study area was chosen based on its representativeness of the region and more importantly for comparative power across a broad range of permafrost, vegetation, and degradation types. The main objective is to analyze the differences and similarities between sites to better understand the variations of impacts. To understand and compare the impacts of permafrost degradation between the different sites, the team has defined several indicators of the vulnerability of soils, surface/ground waters: natural and anthropogenic stressors, permafrost conditions and degradation, hydrologic and aquatic chemistry, carbon cycle and microbial communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.