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Warmer temperatures and thawing soils may be driving an increase in emissions of carbon dioxide from Alaskan tundra to the atmosphere, particularly during the early winter, according to a new study supported by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). More carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere will accelerate climate warming, which, in turn, could lead to the release of even more carbon dioxide from these soils.

A new paper led by Roisin Commane, an atmospheric researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, finds the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from northern tundra areas between October and December each year has increased 70 percent since 1975. Commane and colleagues analyzed three years of aircraft observations from NASA's Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) airborne mission to estimate the spatial and seasonal distribution of Alaska's carbon dioxide emissions. They also studied NOAA's 41-year record of carbon dioxide measured from ground towers in Barrow (the name recently changed back to Utqiagvik), Alaska. The aircraft data provided unprecedented spatial information, while the ground data provided long-term measurements not available anywhere else in the Arctic. Results of the study are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Some scientists dream about big data. The dream bridges two divided realms. One realm holds lofty peaks of number-crunching scientific computation. Endless waves of big data analysis line the other realm. A deep chasm separates the two. Discoveries await those who cross these estranged lands.

Unfortunately, data cannot move seamlessly between Hadoop (HDFS) and parallel file systems (PFS). Scientists who want to take advantage of the big data analytics available on Hadoop must copy data from parallel file systems. That can slow workflows to a crawl, especially those with terabytes of data.

Warmer temperatures and thawing soils may be driving an increase in emissions of carbon dioxide from Alaskan tundra to the atmosphere, particularly during the early winter, according to a new study supported by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). More carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere will accelerate climate warming, which, in turn, could lead to the release of even more carbon dioxide from these soils.

A new paper led by Roisin Commane, an atmospheric researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, finds the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from northern tundra areas between October and December each year has increased 70 percent since 1975. Commane and colleagues analyzed three years of aircraft observations from NASA's Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) airborne mission to estimate the spatial and seasonal distribution of Alaska's carbon dioxide emissions. They also studied NOAA's 41-year record of carbon dioxide measured from ground towers in Barrow (the name recently changed back to Utqiagvik), Alaska. The aircraft data provided unprecedented spatial information, while the ground data provided long-term measurements not available anywhere else in the Arctic. Results of the study are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Remote motion-sensitive photography, or camera trapping, is revolutionizing surveys of wild animal populations. Camera trapping is an efficient means of detecting rare species, conducting species inventories and biodiversity assessments, estimating site occupancy, and observing behaviour. If individual animals can be identified from the images obtained, camera trapping data can also be used to estimate animal density and population size – information critical to effective wildlife management and conservation.

For this reason, camera traps were initially popularized by researchers studying big cats and other species with distinctive coat markings. Since then, thousands of camera traps have been deployed in wildlife habitat across the globe, especially in tropical forest ecosystems where animals are difficult to survey by other means. However, methods for estimating abundances of species which cannot be individually identified are still in development, and none is generally accepted or broadly applied.

It is becoming more and more appreciated that a major part of the biologic activity is not going on at the ground surface, but is hidden underneath the soil down to depths of several kilometres in an environment coined the “deep biosphere”. Studies of life-forms in this energy-poor system have implications for the origin of life on our planet and for how life may have evolved on other planets, where hostile conditions may have inhibited colonization of the surface environment. The knowledge about ancient life in this environment deep under our feet is extremely scarce.

In numerous cracks down to depths of 1700 meter that have been partly sealed by crystals grown in them, an international team of researchers led by Dr. Henrik Drake from Linnaeus University, Sweden, has traced fundamental ancient microbial processes, including production and consumption of the greenhouse gas methane. The multi-disciplinary approach included micro-scale measurement of stable isotopes coupled with geochronology within minerals formed in response to microbial activity at several Swedish granitic rock sites. This is the most extensive study on ancient microbial activity in the continental crust yet and the findings suggest that microbial methane formation and consumption are widespread in the bedrock.