Persistent Nitrogen Flux from Tundra Ten Years After Massive Wildfire
Climate change is triggering widespread ecosystem disturbance across the permafrost zone, including rapidly increased incidence of tundra wildfire.Wildfire extent and intensity have, with unknown consequences for Arctic terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem biogeochemistry, as wildfire may cause terrest...
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ftutahsudc:oai:digitalcommons.usu.edu:runoff-1915 2023-05-15T15:06:13+02:00 Persistent Nitrogen Flux from Tundra Ten Years After Massive Wildfire Bratsman, Samuel 2019-03-27T00:00:00Z https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/runoff/2019/all/36 unknown DigitalCommons@USU https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/runoff/2019/all/36 Spring Runoff Conference Earth Sciences Environmental Engineering Environmental Sciences Hydraulic Engineering Life Sciences text 2019 ftutahsudc 2022-03-07T21:49:31Z Climate change is triggering widespread ecosystem disturbance across the permafrost zone, including rapidly increased incidence of tundra wildfire.Wildfire extent and intensity have, with unknown consequences for Arctic terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem biogeochemistry, as wildfire may cause terrestrial vegetation shifts, increasing productivity and nutrient demand; alternatively, wildfire regimes may intensify lateral nutrient loss from the landscapes into adjacent river networks. To address this unknown, we used the river network as a sensor, collecting water samples from 60 burned and unburned watersheds around the Anaktuvuk River fire scar in northern Alaska. We used a novel aerial sampling technique to collect samples three times during the flow seasons of 2017 and 2018, ten years after the wildfire. Despite a decade of ecosystem recovery, we observed nearly a doubling of total dissolved nitrogen concentration, primarily due to elevated organic nitrogen and secondarily from inorganic nitrogen increases. Isotopic analysis suggests that burn-mobilized lateral nitrogen flux comes from old soil nitrogen, not newly-fixed inputs from vegetation shifts. These findings indicate that tundra wildfire could destabilize nitrogen previously stored in permafrost, potentially exacerbating terrestrial nitrogen limitation and altering aquatic and estuarine ecosystems in the permafrost zone. Text Arctic Climate change permafrost Tundra Alaska Utah State University: DigitalCommons@USU Arctic |
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Utah State University: DigitalCommons@USU |
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ftutahsudc |
language |
unknown |
topic |
Earth Sciences Environmental Engineering Environmental Sciences Hydraulic Engineering Life Sciences |
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Earth Sciences Environmental Engineering Environmental Sciences Hydraulic Engineering Life Sciences Bratsman, Samuel Persistent Nitrogen Flux from Tundra Ten Years After Massive Wildfire |
topic_facet |
Earth Sciences Environmental Engineering Environmental Sciences Hydraulic Engineering Life Sciences |
description |
Climate change is triggering widespread ecosystem disturbance across the permafrost zone, including rapidly increased incidence of tundra wildfire.Wildfire extent and intensity have, with unknown consequences for Arctic terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem biogeochemistry, as wildfire may cause terrestrial vegetation shifts, increasing productivity and nutrient demand; alternatively, wildfire regimes may intensify lateral nutrient loss from the landscapes into adjacent river networks. To address this unknown, we used the river network as a sensor, collecting water samples from 60 burned and unburned watersheds around the Anaktuvuk River fire scar in northern Alaska. We used a novel aerial sampling technique to collect samples three times during the flow seasons of 2017 and 2018, ten years after the wildfire. Despite a decade of ecosystem recovery, we observed nearly a doubling of total dissolved nitrogen concentration, primarily due to elevated organic nitrogen and secondarily from inorganic nitrogen increases. Isotopic analysis suggests that burn-mobilized lateral nitrogen flux comes from old soil nitrogen, not newly-fixed inputs from vegetation shifts. These findings indicate that tundra wildfire could destabilize nitrogen previously stored in permafrost, potentially exacerbating terrestrial nitrogen limitation and altering aquatic and estuarine ecosystems in the permafrost zone. |
format |
Text |
author |
Bratsman, Samuel |
author_facet |
Bratsman, Samuel |
author_sort |
Bratsman, Samuel |
title |
Persistent Nitrogen Flux from Tundra Ten Years After Massive Wildfire |
title_short |
Persistent Nitrogen Flux from Tundra Ten Years After Massive Wildfire |
title_full |
Persistent Nitrogen Flux from Tundra Ten Years After Massive Wildfire |
title_fullStr |
Persistent Nitrogen Flux from Tundra Ten Years After Massive Wildfire |
title_full_unstemmed |
Persistent Nitrogen Flux from Tundra Ten Years After Massive Wildfire |
title_sort |
persistent nitrogen flux from tundra ten years after massive wildfire |
publisher |
DigitalCommons@USU |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/runoff/2019/all/36 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Climate change permafrost Tundra Alaska |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change permafrost Tundra Alaska |
op_source |
Spring Runoff Conference |
op_relation |
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/runoff/2019/all/36 |
_version_ |
1766337869560938496 |