The core faculty (Sue, John, Paul, myself) have worked to come up with a reading list for all the new students that will be travelling to Cherskiy in July. It’s organized around the science themes we  pursue while there and reflects a mix of really big picture ideas – say restoring the mammoth tundra steppe  – to the nitty-gritty details of measuring forests and streams.

The research goals of the Polaris Project are to understand the processes that regulate the storage, movement, and transformation of carbon and nutrients through Arctic ecosystems, particularly in the context of a warming climate. Permafrost (perennially frozen ground) regions are important in terms of biological feedbacks to climate change because they store more than twice the amount of carbon than is currently contained in the atmosphere. Much of that carbon is frozen in permafrost, but as temperatures increase this carbon pool is at risk of being transported to the atmosphere as greenhouse gasses. There is great uncertainty, however, in the size of the arctic carbon pool, and also in the magnitude and timing of potential carbon losses.

In 2013, we will focus our research efforts on the Y4 watershed, which is a small watershed (about 3 sq. km) located in the vicinity of the Northeast Science Station. This area is fully underlain by permafrost and is primarily comprised of larch forests, common across much of the boreal region of Siberia. By concentrating our efforts in this watershed we will be better able to understand linkages between landscape components and strengthen our ability to scale up to larger watersheds, such as the Kolyma. One of the most exciting aspects of the Polaris Project is the wide-breadth of research expertise of the project faculty and PIs. Research collaborations between PIs and students allow us to take a whole systems approach that is critical in the tightly coupled systems of the Arctic.

Some questions we hope to address with our research are:

• How much carbon is in permafrost and active layer soils, and in above and belowground biomass?
• How vulnerable is this carbon pool to decomposition? How does movement from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems change the lability of permafrost and active layer carbon?
• What is the form of carbon released to the atmosphere (CH4 and CO2), and how does this change across the landscape?
• What are the biological and environmental drivers of carbon fluxes?
• Within an ecosystem, how to different components (vegetation, soil, microbes, physical environment) interact, and how do these interactions control carbon and nutrient uptake, loss, transport, transformation?

Happy reading to the students and other intrepid passersby.