Concentrations of carbon, nitrogen, lignin and lipid biomarkers in subsea permafrost of the inner Laptev Sea

Birgit Wild, Örjan Gustafsson

This dataset includes organic carbon and nitrogen content, ¹³C content of organic carbon, as well as concentrations of lignin phenols, n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids, n-alkanols and selected sterols in subsea permafrost samples from the inner Laptev Sea. Samples from five cores are included, and span a range of depths from 1 to 50 m, with highest resolution around the ice-bonded permafrost table at the time of sampling.

The data allow an assessment of carbon storage, organic matter sources and degradation history in subsea permafrost — one of the least constrained compartments of the global carbon cycle.

Cores were taken between 2012 and 2014 in the Buor Khaya Bay.

Citation

Birgit Wild, Örjan Gustafsson (2022) Concentrations of carbon, nitrogen, lignin and lipid biomarkers in subsea permafrost of the inner Laptev Sea. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/wild-2022-subsea-permafrost-1

References

Wild B, Shakhova N, Dudarev O, Ruban A, Kosmach D, Tumskoy V, Tesi T, Grimm H, Nybom I, Matsubara F, Alexanderson H, Jakobsson M, Mazurov A, Semiletov I, Gustafsson Ö (2022) Organic matter composition and greenhouse gas production of thawing subsea permafrost in the Laptev Sea. Nature Communications 13:5057. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32696-0

Data description

The dataset consists of one xlsx file with core ID, sample depth, concentrations of organic carbon and total nitrogen, ratio of organic carbon over nitrogen, ¹³C content of organic carbon, specific surface area of minerals, and concentrations of individual lignin phenols, hydroxybenzenes, p-hydroxybenzenes, n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids, n-alkanols, b-sitosterol and sitostanol. Abbreviations are explained in a separate tab.

In addition to numeric data values, the characters n.d. and * are also used in the data table, with the following meanings:

n.d. = Not detected
* = Below the calculated Limit of Detection

The character * is always used together with a numeric value; e.g. *26, *150, *4.