Storage and export of microbial biomass across the western Greenland Ice Sheet
Irvine-Fynn, T. D. L.; Edwards, A.; Stevens, I. T.; Mitchell, A. C.; Bunting, P.; Box, J. E.; Cameron, K. A.; Cook, J. M.; Naegeli, K.; Rassner, S. M. E.; Ryan, J. C.; Stibal, M.; Williamson, C. J.; Hubbard, A. (2021-06-25)
Irvine-Fynn, T.D.L., Edwards, A., Stevens, I.T. et al. Storage and export of microbial biomass across the western Greenland Ice Sheet. Nat Commun 12, 3960 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24040-9
© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2021102252029
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
The Greenland Ice Sheet harbours a wealth of microbial life, yet the total biomass stored or exported from its surface to downstream environments is unconstrained. Here, we quantify microbial abundance and cellular biomass flux within the near-surface weathering crust photic zone of the western sector of the ice sheet. Using groundwater techniques, we demonstrate that interstitial water flow is slow (~10⁻² m d⁻¹), while flow cytometry enumeration reveals this pathway delivers 5 × 108 cells m⁻² d⁻¹ to supraglacial streams, equivalent to a carbon flux up to 250 g km⁻² d⁻¹. We infer that cellular carbon accumulation in the weathering crust exceeds fluvial export, promoting biomass sequestration, enhanced carbon cycling, and biological albedo reduction. We estimate that up to 37 kg km⁻² of cellular carbon is flushed from the weathering crust environment of the western Greenland Ice Sheet each summer, providing an appreciable flux to support heterotrophs and methanogenesis at the bed.
Kokoelmat
- Avoin saatavuus [32049]