Directors welcome 2018 was a very busy year dominated by the activities reflecting CENPERMs next phase. Several new PhD projects have been initiated focussing on changes in precipitation and water movement across the landscape, transport and availability of nutrients and ecosystems responses. The importance of arctic hydrology on a landscape scale is a keystone for CENPERM and linked directly to the decision to offer a faculty position at CENPERM to Ylva Sjöberg from The Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University. It is a pleasure to announce that Ylva Sjöberg will join the CENPERM group from March 2019. In 2018 CENPERM initiated an ice-coring campaign at Disko in collaboration with the Centre for Ice and Climate, at University of Copenhagen. Despite the focus on the ice-free part of Greenland, ice cores from glaciers near the edge of the inland ice sheet are of great interest to us. Ice cores allow us to explore the climate signal for the past several centuries, which can then be compared with the roughly 100 years of growth captured in living plants, as well as hopefully extrapolating such dendrochronologies further back in time. One of the key components for CENPERM is the use of both satellites and drones for asses- Drilling on Storbræen, Disko, West Greenland. Photo: Bo Elberling Professor Bo Elberling Director of CENPERM sing spatial and temporal tends in changes in the surface of landscape. Mojtaba Karami completed and defended his PhD thesis at CENPERM on Tundra viewed from above. As part of this work, ecosystem types across the whole of Greenland have been mapped with a resolution of 30 meters by integrating new technologies: newer satellites, high-performance computing, machine learning and plenty of in-situ observations. Details of this work can be found on page 10. Finally, thank you all CENPERM members and collaborators. Thank you are two small words but they mean a lot. We are indeed an ambitious team: we keep planning and discussing in every meeting, every project, every day. We have learned to be better, and we have learned that better is better than bigger. I am very pleased with all the commitment and hard work behind theses, papers, films, outreach in all kind of formats and not the least the happy faces. Copenhagen, March 2019 Bo Elberling CENPERM Annual Report 2018 3 ANNUAL REPORT 2018 CENPERM Center for Permafrost Field sites Brønlundhus Qaanaaq Svalbard Longyearbyen Greenland Zackenberg Disko Qajaa Sweden Kangerlussuaq Nuuk Narsarsuaq Abisko Sermilik Directors welcome Visions and aims Highlights 2018 Højdepunk ter 2018 Revealing the tundras secrets from space Publications & conferences Communication & outreach Educational activities Ongoing research projects & graduate students International collaborators & funding CENPERM staff 3 4 6 8 10 12 1 2 CENPERM Annual Report 2018 Directors welcome 2018 was a very busy year dominated by the activities reflecting CENPERMs next phase. Several new PhD projects have been initiated focussing on changes in precipitation and water movement across the landscape, transport and availability of nutrients and ecosystems responses. The im Visions and aims Center for Permafrost Microbial activity Plant ecology CENPERM Permafrost soil & landscape dynamics CENPERM integrates multidisciplinary research of biogeochemical and physical processes in a climate-vegetation-soil-microorganismpermafrost approach in transects across the major c CENPERM Annual Report 2018 5 Highlights 2018 CENPERM highlights of 2018 include examples of intensive fieldwork and laboratory incubations and how these two components can be integrated in process modelling. Three papers below highlight the benefits of plot level based studies of volatile organic compound (VOC) production, mult budget for a typical and wide-spread heathlandtype ecosystem in Greenland. Two main results can be highlighted: (1) more than 13% of the carbon turnover measured as respiration occurs during the non-growing season and (2) the ecosystem is overall a weak C sink without any significant changes to be n Højdepunkter 2018 Højdepunkterne for CENPERM i 2018 omfatter tre eksempler på intensivt feltarbejde og laboratorie-inkubationer, samt hvordan disse to komponenter kan integreres i procesmodellering. De udvalgte artikler beskæftiger sig med studier af (1) produktion af flygtige organiske forbindelser serie af CO2-flux målinger i Nordøstgrønland til at kalibrere og validere en procesorienteret model (CoupModel). Dette muliggør en unik kvantificering af forskellige elementer i kulstofregnskabet for økosystemet i et tundralandskab, der er en typisk landskabstype for store dele af Grønland. To hoved Revealing the tundras secrets from space by Mojtaba Karami, PhD student, CENPERM, University of Copenhagen Dozens of spaceborne platforms are currently imaging the earths surface, and this number is only expected to grow over the coming years. Using the wealth of data these instruments create, we c tion of these processes to be able to upscale them from the field level to larger extents, for example the entire landscape, region or the Arctic. Tools like fixed cameras, drones, and flux towers help us to gain highly detailed and reliable estimates of the landscapelevel dynamics, but they can do Publications & conferences Akperov, M., Rinke, A., Mokhov, I. I., Matthes, H., Semenov, V. A., Adakudlu, M.,... Zhang, W. (2018). Cyclone activity in the Arctic from an ensemble of regional climate models (Arctic CORDEX). Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 123, 2537-2554. Cable, S., Chris archaeological and environmental archives of the Arctic. Antiquity 92, 573-586. Karami, M., Westergaard-Nielsen, A., Normand, S., Treier, U., Elberling, B., Hansen, B.U. (2018). A phenology-based approach to the classification of Arctic tundra ecosystems in Greenland. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry Schmidt, N.M., Mosbacher, J.B., Vesterinen, E.J., Roslin, T., Michelsen, A. (2018). Limited dietary overlap amongst resident Arctic herbivores in winter: complementary insights from complementary methods. Oecologia 187, 689-699. Scott, D.L., Bradley, R.L., Bellenger, J.-P., Houle, D., Gundale, M.J., Technical reports Invited speakers Lund, M., Sigsgaard, C., Abermann, J. Skov, K., Friborg, T., Hansen, B.U. (2018). Extreme rain event what are consequences for Arctic Ecosystems. In: Christensen, T.R. & Topp-Jørgensen, E. Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring Annual Report Cards 2017. Danish Centre for Communication & outreach CENPERM continued its series of weekly talks at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management. These seminars were also held for PhD students and postdocs to present specific parts of their work, to create a forum for sharing of knowledge, problems, and solut Elberling, B. Klima og permafrost i Nordøstgrønland: Når plantevækst og permafrost er to sider af samme sag. Gentoftes Kulturnat (Det Grønlandske Selskab), Charlottenlund. Sep. 28. Elberling, B. Klima og permafrost i Grønland. Offentligt foredrag i Videnskabernes Selskab, København. Dec. 3. http://w Oct. 4. Jörg Schaller, Assistant professor, University Bayreuth, Environmental Geochemistry. Silicon and calcium effects on permafrost phosphorus mobilization, implications for soil respiration. Oct. 11. Benny Guralnik, Postdoc, CAPRES A/S & DTU Nanotech. Novel methods for environmental palaeo-therm Educational activities CENPERMs activities in 2018 include a number of educational efforts. These include both arctic field courses and classic university courses at the basic and advanced levels at the University of Copenhagen. In addition to course taught, a number of M.Sc. theses have been superv Arctic biology, Dept. of Biology, University of Copenhagen, spring, R. Rinnan, A. Michelsen, A. Priemé. Arctic nature and society, The Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, spring, B. Elberling. Climate change and biogeochemical cycles. Dept. of Biology, University of Copenhag Ongoing research projects & graduate students Like previous years, a special Master theses workshop was held in March with discussion and presentations of projects in progress. A number of the master students participated in the CENPERM fieldwork in Greenland and Northern Sweden. Postdoctoral projec Ongoing PhD projects at CENPERM 2018 Baggesen, Nanna: Emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) from a subarctic heath ecosystem, using a PTR-MS that allows for diurnal measurements on a fine time resolution. Supervisor: Riikka Rinnan. Fenger-Nielsen, Rasmus: Predicting and mapping en Ongoing MSc projects at CENPERM 2018 Andersen, Emil Alexander Sherman: Vegetation analysis and soil biogeochemical characteristics in the Nuuk region, Greenland in relation to archaeological sites and climate change. Supervisors: Anders Michelsen and Bo Elberling. Frendrup, Laura Lønstrup: The impac Ryde, Amalie: Herbivore-induced volatile organic compounds, and changes through an elevation gradient, induced by winter moth on mountain birch in the Subarctic, Tromsø. Supervisors: Riikka Rinnan and Elizabeth Jakobsen Neilson. Skardhamar, Mira Nordsmark: Climate change impacts on tundra litter BVO International collaborators & funding Research activities at CENPERM are linked to a number of well-established international arctic networks. These cooperation agreements are supplemented by a strong affiliation to internationally recognized researchers. CENPERM has continuously extended the inter Northern Arizona University and OEB Harvard University, USA: Analyzing phenocam images. Scientific publication. Russian Academy of Science, Russia: M. G. Akperov. Arctic cyclones. Scientific publications. Stanford University, USA: A. Ahlström. Modelling large-scale C cycle. Stockholm University, Swe University of Oslo, Department of Geosciences, Norway: B. Etzelmuller, S. Westermann. Permafrost modelling. O. Humlum; Field work (and data analyses) of geomorphology at Disko, W. Greenland. University of Montana, USA: F. Gilman. Disko soil microbial studies. University of Sherbrooke, Canada: J.P. B Private Danish funding Velux Foundation: REMAINS of Greenland (REsearch and Management of Archaeological sites IN a changing environment and Society). Grant holder: Jørgen Hollesen. On behalf of CENPERM: Bo Elberling (20162019): DKK 5.0 mio. International funding Austrian Science Fund (FWF): Erwin-S CENPERM staff 30 Researchers Ambus Per Lennart Andersen Thorbjørn J. Danielsen Birgitte Elberling Bo Faucherre Samuel Friborg Thomas Hansen Birger Ulf Hollesen Jørgen Karami Mojtaba Kroon Aart Michelsen Anders Permin Aya Priemé Anders Rinnan Riikka Ro-Poulsen Helge Rousk Kathrin Schurgers Guy Seco CENPERM staff PhD students Baggesen Cable Faucherre Fenger-Nielsen Karami Kramshøj Pedersen Permin Rasmussen Rieksta Simin St Pierre Wang Xu Zastruzny Nanna Stefanie Samuel Rasmus Mojtaba Magnus Emily Pickering Aya Laura H. Jolanta Tihomir Kyra Peiyan Wenyi Sebastian PhD student PhD student PhD st ANNUAL REPORT 2018 The Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) is an independent organization established by the Danish Parliament in 1991 with the objective to promote and stimulate basic research at the highest international level at the frontiers of all scientific fields. The Center of Excell