Permafrost thaw and climate warming may decrease the CO2, carbon, and metal concentration in peat soil waters of the Western Siberia Lowland

Soil porewaters are a vital component of the ecosystem as they are efficient tracers of mineralweathering, plant litter leaching, and nutrient uptake by vegetation. In the permafrost environment, maximal hydraulic connectivity and element transport from soils to rivers and lakes occurs via supra-permafrost flow (i.e. water, gases, suspended matter, and solutes migration over the permafrost table). To assess possible consequences of permafrost thaw and climate warming on carbon and Green House gases (GHG) dynamics we used a substituting space for time approach in the largest frozen peatland of theworld. We sampled stagnant supra-permafrost (active layer) waters in peat columns of western Siberia Lowland (WSL) across substantial gradients of climate (-4.0 to -9.1 degrees C mean annual temperature, 360 to 600 mm annual precipitation), active layer thickness (ALT) (N300 to 40 cm), and permafrost coverage (sporadic, discontinuous and continuous). Weanalyzed CO2, CH4, dissolved carbon, and major and trace elements (TE) in 93 soil pit samples corresponding to several typical micro landscapes constituting theWSL territory (peat mounds, hollows, and permafrost subsidences and depressions). We expected a decrease in intensity of DOC and TE mobilization from soil and vegetation litter to the suprapermafrost waterwith increasing permafrost coverage, decreasing annual temperature and ALT along a latitudinal transect from 62.3 degrees N to 67.4 degrees N. However, a number of solutes (DOC, CO2, alkaline earth metals, Si, trivalent and tetravalent hydrolysates, and micronutrients (Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, V, Mo) exhibited a northward increasing trend with highest concentrations within the continuous permafrost zone. Within the substituting space for time climate change scenario and northward shift of the permafrost boundary, our results suggest that CO2, DOC, and many major and trace elements will decrease their concentration in soil supra-permafrost waters at the boundary between thaw and frozen layers. As a result, export of DOC and elements from peat soil to lakes and rivers of the WSL (and further to the Arctic Ocean) may decrease. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.