Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

The forests, peatlands and lakes of the sub-boreal to sub-arctic regions of Canada store and vast amounts of atmospheric carbon (C) as organic matter in vegetation, soils, and sediments that play key roles in climate system feedbacks. Further, they contain a large volume of the world's potable freshwater, are vital habitats, and support sport and subsistence fisheries and forestry and mineral natural resource industries. Multiple regional and global stressors ranging including resource exploitation, regional atmospheric pollution, invasive species, and global climate change impact the carbon, nutrient, and pollutant cycling in these ecosystems. Linkages between C, nutrient, and pollutant dynamics are often intertwined, and in Precambrian Shield environments where hydrologic connectivity is tight, ecosystem dynamics of upland, wetland, and aquatic environments are also tightly linked.******We are requesting a C and nitrogen (N) analytical system capable of both liquid (surface and soil waters and soil and sediment extracts) and solid (soils, sediments, tissues) phase analyses. Analysis of organic C and associated N will allow our groups to measure net rates of litter and soil decomposition processes, plant and microbial transfers across northern Canadian forest, wetland, and lake ecosystems, and substrate bioavailability to, and biomass of, water, soil and sediment microbial communities that are responsible for mineralization of organic matter and release of greenhouse gasses from these ecosystems. This system will allow our HQP to characterize ecosystem C stocks and fluxes, organic matter bioavailability, and microbial biomass across impacted and recovering landscapes (connected upland-wetland-lake catchments) in the contexts of severe regional-scale industrial pollution, climate change, invasions, and forestry.