SOIL TEXTURE ANALYSIS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION ECOSYSTEM EXPERIMENT (NGEE)

Research is being conducted in the Arctic region of northern Alaska for the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment (NGEE). NGEE is a collaborative effort amongst several federal and state research institutions, as they collectively aim to assess and analyze a predictive model of the Arctic ecosystem in response to climate change. The Arctic is abundant with soil that has been frozen for thousands of years, otherwise known as permafrost. Hence, this requires the exploration of permafrost cores to develop a foundation in understanding the soil properties, hydrogeologic features, and ecological and biochemical processes. To gauge these aforementioned processes, one must conduct extensive field and laboratory research to investigate geophysical approaches for the Arctic subsurface. Should our global temperature continue to rise, permafrost is expected to thaw, which in turn could release organic matter that has been stored in the frozen soils, leading to potential high release of greenhouse gases. Thus, the author has engaged in soil texture analysis to develop an understanding of these permafrost cores. From research conducted at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab (LBL), the author and several LBL scientists have extrapolated key data to help determine organic matter and carbon concentrations.