Our geo-science and environmental science students hail from a wide range of institutions and disciplines. All are interested in scientific research and are participating in our study of biogeochemical processes in northern upland and wetland ecosystems.
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Ashley Lang University of Georgia Ecology major Hi! I'm Ashley Lang and I am from Peachtree City, Georgia. I am an Ecology major at the University of Georgia with a minor in Spanish. I am interested in the effects of climate change on ecosystem-level processes. At UGA, I have been involved in research about the biogeochemistry of forests in the southeastern U.S., so I am very excited to get the chance to study carbon emissions in a completely new environment! My project in Abisko concerns the ebullitive flux of methane from thaw ponds in Stordalen mire. In the next few weeks, I will be collecting methane bubbles as they are released from these ponds and calculating the flux of methane from ebullition (bubbling). This topic is interesting to me because our warming climate is leading to permafrost degradation and thaw pond formation across the Arctic, yet little is known about the magnitude of their potential contribution to the global methane budget. I will also be installing ebullition traps in the mire peat along a transect with known methane emissions, so we will be able to determine how much of the methane being released in this area is due to ebullition versus other emission pathways.
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