THE IPA PLANNING MEETING,
STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY, MARCH 3-4, 2005.

     The large group of the CWG-members attended the IPA planning meeting held at Stockholm University on March 3-4, 2005. The IPA President Jerry Brown, Patrick Crill (Stockholm University), Sergey Goryachkin, Peter Kuhry (the initiator and host of the meeting), Galina Mazhitova, Eva-Maria Pfeiffer and Charles Tarnocai participated in the meeting and further input from Jan Boelhouwers (Uppsala University) and Torben Christensen (Lund University) also took place. The group proposed a new IPA project under the title 'Carbon Pools in Permafrost Regions', in short the IPA CAPP project.

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     The International Permafrost Association 'Carbon Pools in Permafrost Regions' project (in short, the IPA CAPP project) aims at quantifying below-ground organic matter quantity and quality along ecoclimatic and edaphic gradients in high latitude and high altitude regions characterized by the presence of isolated to continuous permafrost. Below-ground carbon is used here in a broad sense to include upland soils and peat deposits. Also other sub-surface carbon pools in land areas such as lake deposits and buried ice bodies are considered. The CAPP project will coordinate its activities with other international programs and develop a network of scientists engaged in this type of research.

     A first step is to update the existing database on Carbon in Cryosols with additional data, also from non-permafrost sites in permafrost regions. The CAPP project will contribute to and initiate new research activities at ca. 10-12 high latitude transects in the northern hemisphere representing the range of ecoclimatic and permafrost regions, complemented by 2 transects in the sub-Antarctic and Antarctic regions, and additional altitudinal transects in high alpine environments. Intensive study sites along these transects will investigate the allocation of below-ground carbon in the landscape, comparing quantity and quality between different permafrost settings. The organic matter will be analyzed using a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated geochemical and absolute dating techniques.

      Protocols are developed for the carbon database, field sampling, physico-chemical analyses and upscaling tools. The inventory, monitoring, research and upscaling activities of the CAPP project will result in a better understanding of total below-ground organic matter allocation and its susceptibility to decay, which will be used to evaluate the fate of this very significant carbon pool under global warming and assess feedbacks from high latitude/altitude permafrost regions to the global climate system. An important objective is to develop a carbon database that can be linked with remotely sensed classifications at global to regional scales used in climate, biome and ecosystem models.

      The new initiative should have the status of an IPA 'project', to be confirmed at the IPA Council meeting in Potsdam (June 2005). The status would be revaluated at the next International Permafrost Conference in Alaska (June 2008), where also the continuation of IPA workgroups related to this new initiative will be considered. The 'CAPP' project is expected to run for a period of five years, with a possible extension for another five years.

      Until final confirmation in Potsdam, the 'CAPP' project will be developed by the following steering committee:

Co-chairs

• Peter Kuhry ( Stockholm, Sweden)
• Eva Maria Pfeiffer ( Hamburg, Germany)

(Suggested) Members

• Charles Tarnocai ( Ottawa, Canada)
• Galina Mazhitova ( Syktyvkar, Russia)
• Dmitri Zamolodchikov ( Moscow, Russia) [to be confirmed]
• K. Shiklomanov ( Delaware, U.S.A.) or Vladimir Romanovsky ( Fairbanks, U.S.A.), for spatial modeling [to be confirmed]
• Jim Bockheim ( Madison, U.S.A.) [to be confirmed]
• Bo Elberling ( Copenhagen, Denmark) [ to be confirmed ]

COOPERATION PARTNERS

• GCP (ESSP) and NCEAS
• IASC C-FATE (ICARP2)
• IGBP, including PAGES
• IPA Working Groups (Cryosol, Antarctic, Climate, Mapping, etc.)
• ITEX
• NEESPI
• Planet Earth
• SCAR
• WCRP-CliC
• WMO-GTN-P: CALM and boreholes (TSP)

From the 'Position paper' prepared by Peter Kuhry