Researchers reported that upland landscapes were releasing some of the highest methane emissions yet documented among northern terrestrial ecosystems. The research was sparked when a potent greenhouse gas began ballooning under lawns in Fairbanks.
When Katey Walter Anthony heard rumors of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, ballooning under the lawns of fellow Fairbanks residents, she nearly didn't believe it.But when a local reporter contacted Walter Anthony, who is a research professor at the Institute of Northern Engineering at University of Alaska Fairbanks, to inspect the waterbed-like ground at a nearby golf course, she started to pay attention.
Typically, methane emissions are associated with wetlands, where low oxygen levels in water-saturated soils favor microbes that produce the gas. Yet methane emissions at the study's well-drained, drier sites were in some cases higher than those measured in wetlands. They found that unique formations known as taliks, where deep, expansive pockets of buried soil remain unfrozen year-round, were likely responsible for the elevated methane releases.
The research team emphasized that methane emissions are especially high for sites with Pleistocene-era Yedoma deposits. These soils contain large stocks of carbon that extend tens of meters below the ground surface. Walter Anthony suspects that their high silt content prevents oxygen from reaching deeply thawed soils in taliks, which in turn favors microbes that produce methane.
"Everywhere you have upland Yedoma that forms a talik, we can expect a strong source of methane, especially in the winter," Walter Anthony said.
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