Detection of Environmental Changes in the Arctic Seas: Carbon and Water Masses

Determining the magnitude of particulates and dissolved fluxes within old organic carbon and other terrestrial material from land is critical to constraining a range of issues in the Arctic shelf-basin system, including carbon cycling, the health of the ecosystem, and interpretation of sediment records. The continental shelf of the East Siberian Sea (ESS) is the widest and shallowest in the World Ocean, yet it is the least explored. The wide shelf acts as an important region for production and processing of organic matter before the material is transported into the Arctic Ocean. Input of terrestrial carbon is driven by coastal erosion (POC) and riverine transport (DOC). Change in permafrost state plays an important role in shelf biogeochemical cycling. Then it is important to search for general indicators of environmental changes in the Arctic land-shelf system with focus on carbon compounds. In this report we present new approach to detect environmental changes.