CryoCARB – Decomposition in Arctic soils

Arctic permafrost soils contain twice the amount of carbon than the atmosphere. These huge carbon stocks are potentially highly vulnerable to climate change.

The CryoCarb Project is an international science project including several researchers from Europe and Russia. Our main goal is to advance organic carbon estimates for cryoturbated soils focusing on the Eurasian Arctic and to understand the vulnerability of these carbon stocks in a future climate. Our vision is to use this knowledge to improve existing models to better predict the response of cryoturbated soils to future climate conditions. In my PhD thesis, embedded within the CryoCARB project, I was particularly interested in the interactions of soil organic matter properties,microbial community composition and enzyme activities in cryoturbated Arctic soils and along a latitudinal transect in Western Siberia.

 
Publications
Schnecker J, et al. 2015. Microbial community composition shapes enzyme patterns in topsoil and subsoil horizons along a latitudinal transect in Western Siberia. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 83, 106-115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2015.01.016

Schnecker J, et al. 2014. Effects of soil organic matter properties and microbial community composition on enzyme activities in cryoturbated arctic soils. PLoS ONE 9, e94076. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094076


Principal investigators
Andreas Richter and Christa Schleper, University of Vienna; Peter Kuhrij and Gustav Hugelius, University of Stockholm; Georg Guggenberger, Leiniz University Hannover; Robert Mikutta, now Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg; Hana Santruckova and Jiri Barta, University of Southern Bohemia; TimUrich, now University of Greifswald; Christina Biasi, University of Eastern Finnland

http://www.univie.ac.at/cryocarb/