PEATHOT-Siberian peatlands as an archives of climate warming and longterm carbon dynamics

We start this project this summer and the first goal of the project was collected peat cores located on a latitudinal gradient from North to South from peat bogs of West Siberia. In order to obtain biogenic sediment for multi-proxy analysis, we excavated six-peat monoliths from different mires. Moreover, the 76 surface samples from different mires were taken in order to build a Testate amoeba calibration data set for a quantitative water table reconstruction from this past Siberia. Surface samples were taken along a wet-dry gradient from pools to the hummock.

Using the multiproxy approach (pollen, macrofossils, testate amoebae, charcoal), we would like to explore the issues that interest us: 1) past relations of drought and fires in Western Siberia during the last millennium; 2) peat bog ecosystem functioning in the context of global climate change and permafrost thaw; 3) the human impact on the Siberian landscape over the last 1000 years.