Teatime4science

Teatime4science

Emily Goldstein Museum

Project summary

The decay of organic material, or decomposition, is a critical process for life. While plant material decomposes, it loses weight, releases nutrients and the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂). Changes in climate and decomposition potentially reinforce each other; With global warming, decomposition increases, leading to higher CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere, which in turn accelerates global warming. These feedbacks substantially influence our future climate. However, the current climate models lack sufficient measured data to accurately include feedbacks between decomposition and climate. Solving this requires a new approach and a huge quantity of data. A recently developed method that uses tea bags as test kits is such an approach. By involving citizen scientists, decomposition rates will be measured at a previously unattainable scale and resolution, within a relatively short time. This will break new ground in our understanding of climate effects on decomposition. We will test the effects of changed climate conditions by burying tea worldwide alongside climate manipulation experiments (with open top chambers and rain shelters). We further calibrate the method and measure decomposition under a large variety of environmental conditions in the laboratory. The tea time for science project will thus compile a global soil map of decomposition, and perform the most rigorous test of the relation between climate factors and decay rates using models with increased accuracy.

Project website

www.teatime4science.org

Collaborators

Mariet Hefting, Utrecht University
Taru Sandén, Department for Soil Health and Plant Nutrition at the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES)
Joost Keuskamp, Biont Research

Funding

Vetenskapsrådet

Technical faculty of Umea university

Project Dates

2015 - 2019

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Project Photos

Changing ice-cover regimes in a warmer climate: Effects on northern aquatic ecosystems

Changing ice-cover regimes in a warmer climate: Effects on northern aquatic ecosystems

Ice Sampling at Lake Almberga

Project summary

The goal of this project is to assess the effects of changing ice-cover regimes on aquatic primary production and carbon metabolism in northern freshwater and brackish water coastal ecosystems. Northern aquatic ecosystems are seasonally variable due to long, cold and dark ice-covered winters as well as 24-hour sunlight during summer. A warmer climate has effects on the extensions and magnitudes of snow- and ice-cover, with shorter duration of ice-cover expected for northern aquatic ecosystems. The ice-cover is important for carbon accumulation (CO₂ and CH₄), aquatic-atmosphere gas exchange and a number of biological processes. Hence, a changing ice-cover regime will have important implications for the function of northern aquatic ecosystems and for the role of these systems in the global carbon cycle.

Collaborators

Erin Hotchkiss, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Rolf Vinebrooke, University of Alberta

Funding

Formas
EcoChange

Project Dates

2017 - 2020

Quantifying cryogenic soil-mixing in the tundra soil and its role for the long-term carbon cycling in the arctic

Quantifying cryogenic soil-mixing in the tundra soil and its role for the long-term carbon cycling in the arctic

Project Summary

Tundra soils play an important role in the global carbon cycle. Tundra regions are warming rapidly due to the ongoing global warming, and there are concerns that this will reduce the accumulation rate of carbon in tundra soils. It is even feared, that from being a sink, these soils will instead become a significant source of carbon to the atmosphere, which will add to the currently increasing levels of greenhouse gases. In the discussion about changed carbon cycling due to changed climate in tundra regions, temperature dependent decomposition processes and changed plant productivity rates have been the main mechanisms studied although it has been suggested that soil frost processes, might be of more importance for the fat of the soil carbon pool than temperature dependent microbial processes. The objective with my research project is to test this hypothesis.

Collaborators

Marina Becher, Umeå University