Follow-up of the field season in Finland, 2026

14 August 2026, by Carolin Frauhammer

Photo: UHH/F. Neiske

The automatic chamber system

This July the 2nd field campaign of the Arctic expedition to Kilpisjärvi, Finland, started. Friederike Neiske and Carolin Frauhammer investigated potential greenhouse gas sinks as well as impacts of abrupt permafrost thaw on greenhouse gas fluxes as part of the projects COLDSPOT und PeTCaT. Therefore, the team conducted manual chamber measurements of CH₄, CO₂ and N₂O fluxes across different ecosystems (tundra, forest and palsa, permafrost fenland), with a focus to assess the vegetational influence, and along a thaw gradient of a palsa to explore the changes in carbon and nutrient cycling. These measurements were complemented with soil gas and soil sampling to better understand the underlying processes. Furthermore, gas flux measurements were carried out for the master thesis of Hanna Möser (University Göttingen) master's thesis comparing greenhouse gas fluxes in forest ecosystems in Finnish Lapland and northern Germany, as well as for a project investigating the effects of varying reindeer grazing intensity on greenhouse gas emissions.

Another important task involved the maintenance of the automatic chamber system that had been successfully installed in June and continuously measures greenhouse gas fluxes in an upland tundra ecosystem. In addition, the existing CH₄ and CO₂ analyser was temporarily replaced with an N₂O analyser for one week to enable continuous measurements of nitrous oxide fluxes.