The climate-driven advance of beavers into the Arctic tundra is likely causing the release of more methane—a greenhouse gas—into the atmosphere.
Beavers, as everyone knows, like to make dams. Those dams cause flooding, which inundates vegetation and turns Arctic streams and creeks into a series of ponds. Those beaver ponds and surrounding inundated vegetation can be devoid of oxygen and rich with organic sediment, which releases methane as the material decays.
Methane is also released when organics-rich permafrost thaws as the result of heat carried by the spreading water.
A study linking Arctic beavers to an increase in the release of methane was published in July in Environmental Research Letters.
The lead author is Jason Clark, a former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. Research Professor Ken Tape, also of the Geophysical Institute, was Clark’s adviser and is a co-author. Other co-authors include Benjamin Jones, a research assistant professor at the UAF Institute of Northern Engineering; and researchers from the National Park Service and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
2023-09-09 16:48:02
Link from phys.org