Flushed before thaw: talik nutrient export precedes summer breakthrough in degrading permafrost
(2025) BE-Polar Conference 2025 — Location: Bruxelles (11.September.2025)
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- Climate warming drives progressive permafrost degradation, altering Arctic ecosystem hydrology and biogeochemistry. This degradation promotes talik formation—permanently thawed soil zones—that preferentially develop in subsided areas like watertracks. Despite an increasing presence under climate change, the impact of taliks remains largely unstudied, with little understanding of their consequences on nutrient mobility at the profile and landscape scale. In this study, we investigated taliks distributed along a permafrost degradation gradient at Eight Mile Lake, located within the discontinuous permafrost zone of Interior Alaska. Sampling occurred during winter (February 2024) and summer (June 2024), when soil thaw reached talik depth, a phenomenon called talik breakthrough. We analyzed talik pore water for 87Sr/86Sr ratios and other geochemical parameters including pH, DOC and major/trace element concentrations. Results indicate a flushing of dissolved elements, particularly DOC, that increases with talik degradation. Furthermore, the absence of significant variation during breakthrough suggests that flushing occurs earlier in the season, likely during snowmelt.
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Roux, P., du Bois d’Aische, E., Villani, M., Henrion, M., Godefroid, L., Vandestrate, A., Edward Schuur, & Opfergelt, S. (2025). Flushed before thaw: talik nutrient export precedes summer breakthrough in degrading permafrost. BE-Polar Conference 2025, Bruxelles. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/260707