Low below-ground organic carbon storage in a subarctic Alpine permafrost environment

This study investigates the soil organic carbon SOC) storage in Tarfala Valley, northern Sweden. Field inventories, upscaled based on land cover, show that this alpine permafrost environment does not store large amounts of SOC, with an estimate mean of 0.9 ± 0.2 kg C/m2 for the upper meter of soil. This is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower than what has been reported for lowland permafrost terrain. The SOC storage varies for different land cover classes and ranges from 0.05 kg C/m2 for stone-dominated to 8.4 kg C/m2 for grass-dominated areas. No signs of organic matter burial through cryoturbation or slope processes were found, and radiocarbon-dated SOC is generally of recent origin (