Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

It is now widely accepted that as carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere increases due to the burning of fossil fuels the climate will warm, perhaps to levels unprecedented in human history. Predicting future climate change requires that we can estimate what will happen to atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the future. Since very large quantities of CO2 are stored in soils and cycled between the atmosphere and the world's ecosystems each year, it is important that we understand this cycling and how the ecosystems will respond to a warming climate. At the same time it is important that we seek ways to reduce CO2 emission to the atmosphere. In an attempt to limit atmospheric concentrations the Kyoto Protocol was designed and ratified by a number of the world's countries, Canada signed onto Kyoto in 2003. Part of Canada's obligation to Kyoto is to construct the 'national carbon budget', which not only accounts for all of the fossil fuel emissions in Canada, but also how the Canadian ecosystems are exchanging CO2 with the atmosphere. Therefore, we need to know how our natural environments store and exchange carbon. Our research project is aimed at determining the role of arctic tundra in carbon cycling and the national carbon budget. The tundra is a varied landscape with many different ecosystem types. Each ecosystem is unique in the way that CO2 is exchange with the atmosphere. Some may be net sources to the atmosphere, while other may remove CO2 from the atmosphere. How these ecosystems change as the climate warms is unknown. Our research will measure directly the amount and direction of CO2 exchanged for a variety of tundra surfaces and what factors control that exchange. These experiments will contribute to the development of regional view of Canada's low arctic zone's contribution to global carbon cycling. We have already established a research site at Daring Lake, NWT for this research and measurements of tundra carbon processes has begun. Our goal is to expand and accelerate this program of measurements, so that we can determine if the tundra as a region is a net sink or source for carbon and predict how the tundra carbon exchange will behave in future.