Controls on the respiration of ancient carbon draining from permafrost soils into sunlit Arctic surface waters

Abstract

The thawing of ancient organic carbon stored in arctic permafrost soils, and its oxidation to carbon dioxide (CO2, a greenhouse gas), is predicted to amplify global warming. However, the extent to which organic carbon in thawing permafrost soils will be released as CO2 is uncertain. A critical unknown is the extent to which dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from thawing permafrost soils is respired to CO2 by microbes upon export of freshly thawed DOC to both dark bottom waters and sunlit surface waters. In this study, we quantified the radiocarbon age and 13C composition of CO2 produced by microbial respiration of DOC that was leached from permafrost soils and either kept in the dark or exposed to ultraviolet and visible wavelengths of light. We show that permafrost DOC most labile to microbial respiration was as old or older (ages 4,000–11,000 a BP) and more 13C-depleted than the bulk DOC in both dark and light-exposed treatments, likely indicating respiration of old, 13C-depleted lignin and lipid fractions of the permafrost DOC pool. Light exposure either increased, decreased, or had no effect on the magnitude of microbial respiration of old permafrost DOC relative to respiration in the dark, depending on both the extent of DOC oxidation during exposure to light and the wavelength of light. Together, these findings suggest that photochemical changes affecting the lability of permafrost DOC during sunlight exposure are an important control on the magnitude of microbial respiration of permafrost DOC in arctic surface waters.