Evolution of the Methane Cycle in the Siberian Arctic: Insights from Microbiological and Biogeochemical Studies

Scope
Arctic permafrost environments play an important role within the global methane cycle. For the understanding of the future development of the permafrost environment and its contribution to the global atmospheric carbon budget, it is necessary to comprehend how this system reacted to environmental changes in the past.
The El’gygytgyn lake region, in permafrost-dominated Northeast Siberia, represents an ideal location for studying the response of the methane cycle to climate change. A 141,5 m long permafrost core, covering several glacial-interglacial cycles, was recovered from the lake margin within the ICDP project “Scientific Drilling in El’gygytgyn Crater Lake” in November 2008. In the focus of our investigations are the key microorganisms being implicated in the methane cycle. The occurrence as well as stratigraphic and therefore temporal variability of these microorganisms will be examined combining microbial biomarker and rRNA gene analyses. The obtained data will be interpreted in context of the results on inorganic properties of the permafrost deposits and paleoclimate reconstructions in this area provided by cooperation partners of the ICDP project. 

Participants
 

• Juliane Griess (AWI, GFZ)
• Kai Mangelsdorf (GFZ)
• Dirk Wagner (GFZ)

Partners  

• Georg Schwamborn (AWI)

Funding
The PhD position in this project is collaboratively funded by GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam und Alfred Wegener Institute Potsdam. Project consumables are financed by the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the ICDP project "Scientific Drilling in El'gygytgyn Crater Lake" (ICDP, SPP 1006).