Donatella Zona
San Diego State University, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Arctic soils hold more than twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does today. The far north is warming about twice as fast as the global average, with the largest increases outside summer.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
Arctic
tundra
Alaska
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Extend year-round CO2 and CH4 flux records from five Arctic eddy covariance towers in Alaska to a 20+ year CO2 and 11-year CH4 dataset across moisture and latitude gradients.
- Determine how fall 'zero curtain' conditions, when unfrozen soil hovers near 0 °C, and other cold-season changes affect annual Arctic CO2 and CH4 release.
- Measure nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes with chambers across the North Slope of Alaska, comparing vegetated tundra with unvegetated, disturbed ground where slumping has occurred.
- Assess the large-scale importance of Arctic N2O emissions to help constrain the region's overall greenhouse gas budget.
More about the research
As soils thaw, microbes can release some of that stored carbon as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), and stored nitrogen as nitrous oxide (N2O), all of them greenhouse gases. How much the Arctic emits is still very uncertain, because measurements are sparse in space and especially in the cold seasons. Both of the lab's projects in the North Slope of Alaska aim to fill these gaps in the Arctic greenhouse gas budget.
Why it matters
Arctic greenhouse gas releases could speed up climate change, but current estimates are poorly constrained, especially for winter, for methane and for nitrous oxide. Long-term flux records and new N2O measurements could improve the climate models used to predict future emissions. They could also help scientists determine whether rising atmospheric greenhouse gases come from thawing Arctic ecosystems.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Multi-decadal year-round CO2 and CH4 fluxes to understand long-term impact of climate change on the Arctic carbon balance
NSF · Aug 2020 – Jul 2027
Towards Filling a Major Gap in the Greenhouse Gas Balance From the Arctic: Defining the Importance of N2O Emission in the North Slope of Alaska
NSF · Aug 2022 – Jan 2027
Closest labs
A Joshua Leffler
South Dakota State University, SD·Ecology & Evolution
Manipulate temperature, flooding and goose grazing in a large field experiment in Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta to measure how these factors interact to change coastal and inland wetland plant communities.
Mark Warner
University of Washington, WA·Earth & Environmental Science
Place nitrous oxide (N2O) measurements from several GO-SHIP ocean sections on a common calibration scale, merge them with hydrographic data, and release them publicly.
Shawn Fraver
University of Maine, ME·Earth & Environmental Science
Identify how methanogens (methane-producing microbes) and methanotrophs (methane-consuming microbes) in Howland Forest soils drive methane flux across moisture and other environmental gradients, using microbial community profiling.
The school
San Diego State University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $182M a year on research, 142 research doctorates a year.
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