Studying the carbon balance of a Mackenzie River Delta wetland
Wetlands in the north have historically been a big carbon sink. As plants grow, they pull carbon out of the air. When they die, they freeze into the soil before they can decompose and release that carbon back to the air. This helps to reduce climate change.
Read this open access paper on the Arctic Science website.
However, warming from climate change can impact how strong of a sink these wetlands are. It is important to know what the carbon balance in these wetlands looks like and what controls it. We can use this to figure out how things might change with a warming climate.
In this study, we measured the carbon balance of a wetland at Fish Island, in the Mackenzie River Delta. We also measured weather conditions and used this information to see what factors control the carbon balance. Our study shows that Fish Island was a carbon sink in the summer of 2017. The results also help us understand how things at this site might change in the future.
Read the paper — Controls on carbon dioxide and methane fluxes from a low-center polygonal peatland in the Mackenzie River Delta, Northwest Territories by J. Skeeter, A. Christen, and G.H.R. Henry
