Soil organic carbon (SOC) in permafrost-affected soils has received considerable attention on a global scale because of its massive carbon storage and high sensitivity to climate change. Therefore, adequate characterization of SOC fractions is essential to elucidate carbon dynamics in permafrost-affected ecosystems.

However, many of current studies investigated only changes in the SOC in the active layer, but did not involve deeper soils, such as permafrost. Information on the contents, stocks, and fractions of SOC in different soil layers is still limited in the permafrost-affected soils on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP).

Recently, a research team from the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources of Chinese Academy of Sciences investigated SOC and its fractions across alpine ecosystems, including alpine swamp meadows (ASM), alpine meadows (AM) and alpine steppes (AS) in permafrost regions on the QTP.

The study results show that SOC fractions vary with vegetation type and active layer thickness, thus making SOC sensitive to changes in environmental conditions.

It can be seen that the decomposition of SOC in permafrost-affected soils of the QTP could be accelerated over a degrading permafrost region and under a warming climate. Thus, evaluation of SOC fractions is essential to improve our understanding of carbon transformation in permafrost-affected soils.

This study has been published in the Permafrost and Periglacial Processes in an article entitled “Profile distributions of soil organic carbon fractions in a permafrost region of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau”.

Contact:

JIN Huijun

E-mail: hjjin@lzb.ac.cn

State Key Laboratory of Frozen Soil Engineering, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Science, Lanzhou, 730000, China.