Hej!

My name is Jorien Vonk, born & raised in Holland, but I just finished my PhD at Stockholm University a few weeks ago. I have been looking at terrestrial carbon (from thawing permafrost) from a marine point of view; what happens to this material once it arrives in the coastal ocean? We found out that there are large differences between different “pools” of terrestrial carbon. Some pools (e.g. surface soils and recent plant debris) are degrading rapidly to greenhouse gases when they arrive in the coastal system, while other pools (e.g. ancient “yedoma” released through coastal erosio) tend to settle to the sea bottom rather quickly without undergoing much degradation in coastal waters.

Max offered me the amazing opportunity to join the Polaris Project this July (thanks for that!). I have been out on a ship-based expedition close to the Kolyma river mouth, so it will be very exciting to see this place from the land side! I am looking forward to help out and learn from the broad variety of people joining to Cherskiy, and hope to work a bit on my own postdoc project too. See you in a few weeks in Moscow!

Jorien