Ancient Permafrost, Yedoma, and all its Organic Matter: Contribution of the D-A-CH Permafrost Union to the Upcoming Encyclopaedia of Quaternary Science
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This contribution provides a short summary of three permafrost-related contributions to the upcoming 3rd volume of the Encyclopaedia of Quaternary Science. There are 24 chapters on ‘Permafrost and Periglacial Features’, and three of those are led by authors from the D-A-CH Permafrost Community. Specifically, these are ‘Ancient and past permafrost’, ‘Yedoma: Late Pleistocene ice-rich syngenetic permafrost of Beringia’ and ‘Organic matter storage and vulnerability in the permafrost domain’. With this presentation, we aim to give you a short introduction and show the key figures out of these three encyclopaedia chapters already now. In more detail, the broader perspective on ancient permafrost dynamics examines its formation, stability, and degradation in response to climate variations over the Quaternary. This encyclopaedia contribution distinguishes between ancient permafrost persisting since the Pleistocene and past permafrost, no longer existing at a specific locality. Recent research challenges traditional associations between permafrost and glacial periods, highlighting the complexity of permafrost responses to climate change. The Yedoma segment delves into the unique depositional processes of late Pleistocene Beringia, where a cold, dry climate fostered Yedoma formation due to periglacial weathering and syngenetic ice wedge growth. Yedoma hills in Siberia and foothill regions in Alaska, as well as valley fillings in mountain regions in Siberia and Alaska and in the Yukon Territory of western Canada are remnants of this feature, offering insight into paleoenvironmental, cryolithological, sedimentological and large carbon stock characteristics. The permafrost regions soil organic matter chapter synthesizes recent data and shows that this warming-susceptible region holds a staggering ~1500 Gt of organic carbon on land, with an additional ~2800 Gt in subsea permafrost. As permafrost degrades, it releases carbon, affecting ecosystems and greenhouse gas emissions. Projections indicate that the Arctic might release between 55 and 232 Gt of CO2-equivalent by 2100, emphasizing the region’s potential as a significant carbon source. The abovementioned chapters in the upcoming Encyclopaedia of Quaternary Science contribute valuable insights into ancient permafrost, Yedoma, and organic matter dynamics in the permafrost domain. Understanding and communicating their complexities and also broader relevance to a wider readership advances not only the knowledge about Earth’s largest terrestrial carbon pool but is vital for climate mitigation considerations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.019 | 0.004 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".