This digital database is the product of collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey, the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; the Los Altos Hills Foothill College GeoSpatial Technology Certificate Program; the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam, Germany; and the Institute of Physical Chemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The primary goal for creating this digital database is to enhance current estimates of soil organic carbon stored in deep permafrost, in particular the late Pleistocene syngenetic ice-rich permafrost deposits of the Yedoma Suite. Previous studies estimated that Yedoma deposits cover about 1 million square kilometers of a large region in central and eastern Siberia, but these estimates generally are based on maps with scales smaller than 1:10,000,000. Taking into account this large area, it was estimated that Yedoma may store as much as 500 petagrams of soil organic carbon, a large part of which is vulnerable to thaw and mobilization from thermokarst and erosion.

By tracing the English word permafrost back to its Russian roots, this unique intellectual history uncovers the multiple, contested meanings of permafrost as a scientific idea and environmental phenomenon.

This collection of papers devoted to the Ice Age of northern Russia provides illustrated descriptions of landforms and sediments revealing former ice sheets of the arctic shelf that inundated northern Russia. It shows that a peculiar Siberian type of inland glaciation is inferred from preserved Ice Age features. This type of glacial environment implies arrested landscape evolution in continental climates with fossil glacial ice surviving within the conservative permafrost. The contributions here delve into the problem of the size and age of the last glaciation intensely discussed in the international literature. This is of broad interest because its solution is paramount for global climatic models and the reconstruction of Circum-Arctic paleoenvironments. It is also essential for understanding natural conditions of early human migration into the Arctic. Another point of interest is the book’s discussion of the profound impact of reconstructed glaciers on the tectonic structure and distribution of petroleum reserves.

This book provides a cross-disciplinary overview of permafrost and the carbon cycle by providing an introduction into the geographical distribution of permafrost, with a focus on the distribution of permafrost and its soil carbon reservoirs. The chapters explain the basic physical properties and processes of permafrost soils: ice, mineral and organic components, and how these interact with climate, vegetation and geomorphological processes. In particular, the book covers the role of the large quantities of ice in many permafrost soils which are crucial to understanding carbon cycle processes. An explanation is given on how permafrost becomes loaded with ice and carbon. Gas hydrates are also introduced. Structures and processes formed by the intense freeze-thaw action in the active layer are considered (e.g. ice wedging, cryoturbation), and the processes that occur as the permafrost thaws, (pond and lake formation, erosion). The book introduces soil carbon accumulation and decomposition mechanisms and how these are modified in a permafrost environment. A separate chapter deals with deep permafrost carbon, gas reservoirs and recently discovered methane emission phenomena from regions such as Northwest Siberia and the Siberian yedoma permafrost.