As permafrost degrades, the amount of organic soil carbon (C) that thaws during the growing season will increase, but decomposition may be limited by saturated soil conditions common in high-latitude ecosystems. However, in some areas, soil drying is expected to accompany permafrost thaw as a result of increased water drainage, which may enhance C release to the atmosphere. We examined the effects of ecosystem warming, permafrost thaw, and soil moisture changes on C balance in an upland tundra ecosystem. This study was conducted at a water table drawdown experiment, established in 2011 and located within the Carbon in Permafrost Experimental Heating Research project, an ecosystem warming and permafrost thawing experiment in Alaska. Warming and drying increased cumulative growing season ecosystem respiration by~20% over 3 years of this experiment. Warming caused an almost twofold increase in decomposition of a common substrate in surface soil (0-10 cm) across all years, and drying caused a twofold increase in decomposition (0-20 cm) relative to control after 3 years of drying. Decomposition of older C increased in the dried and in the combined warmed + dried plots based on soil pore space 14 CO 2 . Although upland tundra systems have been considered CH 4 sinks, warming and ground thaw significantly increased CH 4 emission rates. Water table depth was positively correlated with monthly respiration and negatively correlated with CH 4 emission rates. These results demonstrate that warming and drying may increase loss of old permafrost C from tundra ecosystems, but the form and magnitude of C released to the atmosphere will be driven by changes in soil moisture.

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Losses of C from decomposing permafrost may be offset by increased productivity of tundra plants, but nitrogen availability partially limits plant growth in tundra ecosystems. In this soil incubation experiment carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling dynamics were examined from the soil surface down through upper permafrost. We found that losses of CO2 were negatively correlated to net N mineralization because C‐rich surface soils mineralized little N, while deep soils had low rates of C respiration but high rates of net N mineralization. Permafrost soils released a large flush of inorganic N when initially thawed. Depth‐specific rates of N mineralization from the incubation were combined with thaw depths and soil temperatures from a nearby manipulative warming experiment to simulate the potential magnitude, timing, and depth of inorganic N release during the process of permafrost thaw. Our calculations show that inorganic N released from newly thawed permafrost may be similar in magnitude to the increase in N mineralized by warmed soils in the middle of the profile. The total release of inorganic N from the soil profile during the simulated thaw process was twice the size of the observed increase in the foliar N pool observed at the manipulative experiment. Our findings suggest that increases in N availability are likely to outpace the N demand of tundra plants during the first 5 years of permafrost thaw and may increase C losses from surface soils as well as induce denitrification and leaching of N from these ecosystems.

Rapid Arctic warming is expected to increase global greenhouse gas concentrations as permafrost thaw exposes immense stores of frozen carbon (C) to microbial decomposition. Permafrost thaw also stimulates plant growth, which could offset C loss. Using data from 7 years of experimental Air and Soil warming in moist acidic tundra, we show that Soil warming had a much stronger effect on CO flux than Air warming. Soil warming caused rapid permafrost thaw and increased ecosystem respiration (R ), gross primary productivity (GPP), and net summer CO storage (NEE). Over 7 years R , GPP, and NEE also increased in Control (i.e., ambient plots), but this change could be explained by slow thaw in Control areas. In the initial stages of thaw, R , GPP, and NEE increased linearly with thaw across all treatments, despite different rates of thaw. As thaw in Soil warming continued to increase linearly, ground surface subsidence created saturated microsites and suppressed R , GPP, and NEE. However R and GPP remained high in areas with large Eriophorum vaginatum biomass. In general NEE increased with thaw, but was more strongly correlated with plant biomass than thaw, indicating that higher R in deeply thawed areas during summer months was balanced by GPP. Summer CO flux across treatments fit a single quadratic relationship that captured the functional response of CO flux to thaw, water table depth, and plant biomass. These results demonstrate the importance of indirect thaw effects on CO flux: plant growth and water table dynamics. Nonsummer R models estimated that the area was an annual CO source during all years of observation. Nonsummer CO loss in warmer, more deeply thawed soils exceeded the increases in summer GPP, and thawed tundra was a net annual CO source.