Rapid climate warming across northern high latitudes is leading to permafrost thaw and ecosystem carbon release while simultaneously impacting other biogeochemical cycles including nitrogen. We used a two-year laboratory incubation study to quantify concomitant changes in carbon and nitrogen pool quantity and quality as drivers of potential CO2 production in thawed permafrost soils from eight soil cores collected across the southern Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada. These data were contextualized via in situ annual thaw depth measurements from 2015 to 2019 at 40 study sites that varied in burn history. We found with increasing time since experimental thaw the dissolved carbon and nitrogen pool quality significantly declined, indicating sustained microbial processing and selective immobilization across both pools. Piecewise structural equation modeling revealed CO2 trends were predominantly predicted by initial soil carbon content with minimal influence of dissolved phase carbon. Using these results, we provide a first-order estimate of potential near-surface permafrost soil losses of up to 80 g C m(-2) over one year in southern NWT, exceeding regional historic mean primary productivity rates in some areas. Taken together, this research provides mechanistic knowledge needed to further constrain the permafrost-carbon feedback and parameterize system models, while building on empirical evidence that permafrost soils arc at high risk of becoming weaker carbon sinks or even significant carbon sources under a changing climate.

In this study we assess the total storage, landscape distribution, and vertical partitioning of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks on the Brogger Peninsula, Svalbard. This type of high Arctic area is underrepresented in SOC databases for the northern permafrost region. Physico-chemical, elemental, and radiocarbon (C-14) dating analyses were carried out on thirty-two soil profiles. Results were upscaled using both a land cover classification (LCC) and a landform classification (LFC). Both LCC and LFC approaches provide weighted mean SOC 0-100 cm estimates for the study area of 1.0 +/- 0.3 kg C m(-2) (95% confidence interval) and indicate that about 68 percent of the total SOC storage occurs in the upper 30 cm of the soil, and about 10 percent occurs in the surface organic layer. Furthermore, LCC and LFC upscaling approaches provide similar spatial SOC allocation estimates and emphasize the dominant role of vegetated area (4.2 +/- 1.6 kg C m(-2)) and solifluction slopes (6.7 +/- 3.6 kg C m(-2)) in SOC 0-100 cm storage. LCC and LFC approaches report different and complementary information on the dominant processes controlling the spatial and vertical distribution of SOC in the landscape. There is no evidence for any significant SOC storage in the permafrost layer. We hypothesize, therefore, that the Brogger Peninsula and similar areas of the high Arctic will become net carbon sinks, providing negative feedback on global warming in the future. The surface area that will have vegetation cover and incipient soil development will expand, whereas only small amounts of organic matter will experience increased decomposition due to active-layer deepening.