Food cellars, otherwise referred to as ice or meat cellars, (lednik in Russian, k'aetyran in Chukchi, si????uaq in Inupiaq, and siqlugaq in Yupik) are a natural form of refrigeration in permafrost or seasonally frozen ground used to preserve, age, and ferment foods harvested for subsistence, including marine mammals, birds, fish, and plants. Indigenous peoples throughout the Arctic have constructed cellars in frozen ground for millennia. This paper focuses on cellars in Russian and American coastal and island communities of the Bering Strait, the region otherwise known as Beringia. This area has a unique, culturally rich, and politically dynamic history. Many traditions associated with cellars are threatened in Chukchi communities in Russia because of the impacts of climate change, relocation, dietary changes, and industrial development. However, even with warmer temperatures, cellars still provide a means to age and ferment food stuffs following traditional methods. In cooperation with local stakeholders, we measured internal temperatures of 18 cellars in 13 communities throughout the Bering Strait region and northern Alaska. Though cellars are widely used in permafrost regions, their structure, usage, and maintenance methods differ and exhibit influences of local climates, traditions, and economic activities. Monitoring internal temperatures and recording structural descriptions of cellars is important in the face of climate change to better understand the variety and resilience of living adaptations in different cold regions.

The fate of soil organic carbon (SOC) stored in the Arctic permafrost is a key concern as temperatures continue to rise in the northern hemisphere. Studies and conceptual models suggest that degradation of SOC is affected by its composition, but it is unclear exactly which SOC fractions are vulnerable to rapid breakdown and what mechanisms may be controlling SOC degradation upon permafrost thaw. Here, we examine the dynamic consumption and production of labile SOC in an anoxic incubation experiment using soil samples from the active layer at the Barrow Environmental Observatory, Barrow, Alaska, USA. Free-reducing sugars, alcohols, and low-molecular-weight (LMW) organic acids were analyzed during incubation at either -2 or 8 degrees C for up to 240 days. Results show that degradation of simple sugar and alcohol in SOC largely accounts for the initial rapid release of CO2 and CH4 through anaerobic fermentation, whereas the fermentation products, acetate and formate, are subsequently utilized as primary substrates for methanogenesis. Iron(III) reduction is correlated with acetate production and methanogenesis, suggesting its important role as an electron acceptor in SOC respiration in tundra environment. These observations are further supported in a glucose addition experiment, in which rapid CO2 and CH4 production occurred concurrently with rapid production and consumption of labile organics such as acetate. However, addition of tannic acid, as a more complex organic substrate, showed little influence on the overall production of CO2 and CH4 and organic acids. Together our study shows that LIVIW labile SOC controls the initial rapid release of green-house gases upon warming of permafrost soils. We present a conceptual framework for the labile SOC transformations and their relations to fermentation, iron reduction and methanogenesis, thereby providing the basis for improved model prediction of climate feedbacks in the Arctic. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.