The SPLASH Action Group – Towards standardized sampling strategies along the soil-to-hydrosystems continuum in permafrost landscapes

• Main Authors: Fouche, Julien, Shakil, Sarah, Hirst, Catherine, Bröder, Lisa, Agnan, Yannick, Sjöberg, Ylva, Bouchard, Frédéric, EGU General Assembly 2021
• Other Authors: UCL - SST/ELI/ELIE - Environmental Sciences
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Arctic; Climate change; Ice; International Permafrost Association; permafrost; Thermokarst
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/247957; https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11184

The Action Group called ‘Standardized methods across Permafrost Landscapes: from Arctic Soils to Hydrosystems’ (SPLASH), funded by the International Permafrost Association, is a community-driven effort aiming to provide a suite of standardized field strategies for sampling mineral and organic components in soils, sediments, surface water bodies and coastal environments across permafrost landscapes. This unified approach will allow data to be shared and compared, thus improving our understanding of the processes occurring during lateral transport in circumpolar Arctic watersheds. This is an international and transdisciplinary effort aiming to provide a fieldwork “tool box†of the most relevant sampling schemes and sample conservation procedures for mineral and organic permafrost pools. With climate change, permafrost soils are undergoing drastic transformations. Both localized abrupt thaw (thermokarst) and gradual ecosystem shifts (e.g., active layer thickening, vegetation changes) drive changes in hydrology and biogeochemical cycles (carbon, nutrients, and contaminants). Mineral and organic components interact along the “lateral continuum†(i.e., from soils to aquatic systems) changing their composition and reactivity across the different interfaces. The circumpolar Arctic region is characterized by high spatial heterogeneity (e.g., geology, topography, vegetation, and ground-ice content) and large inter-annual and seasonal variations in local climate and biophysical processes. Common sampling strategies, applied in different seasons and locations, could help to tackle the spatial and temporal complexity inextricably linked to biogeochemical processes. This unified approach developed in permafrost landscapes will allow us to overcome the following challenges: (1) identifying interfaces where detectable changes in mineral and organic components occur; (2) allowing spatial comparison of these detectable changes; and (3) capturing temporal (inter-/intra-annual) variations at these interfaces. In order to ...