David Olefeldt
Professor in Catchment and Wetland Sciences at University of Alberta. Research on impacts of disturbances on function of northern peatlands, with focus on carbon cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and on downstream water quality.
- Wildfire causes accelerated permafrost thaw in northern peatlands due to summer-time processes (reduced shading and soil heating) not due to winter-time processes (snow dynamics). Patience pays off - I helped instrument the site in 2014, and now completed by Stephanie Wright! doi.org/10.1002/ppp....
- Getting cold in Edmonton, so this morning it was perfect condition for pancake ice on the North Saskatchewan River.
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- Reposted by David OlefeldtExciting 24-month Postdoc opportunity for a peatland palaeoecologist, working with Dr Jenna Sutherland at Leeds Beckett U. on the NERC-funded InSPIRE project. Investigating initiation of new peatlands in deglaciating parts of Alaska, including fieldwork vacancies.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/ce0984li_web...
- So permafrost peatlands burn and they release lots of CO2 through combustion - but that's just the start. Christopher Schulze shows in a new GRL study that slow recovery causes continued CO2 losses in the following decade - overall similar in magnitude to the combustion! doi.org/10.1029/2025...
- The study was done on a peat plateau which burned in 2019. Christopher and our group managed to get together instrumentation and all in a few months to start measurements. Video below shows the site when we first arrived only a few weeks after the fire. www.youtube.com/watch?v=REGX...
- agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/... The link in the first post doesn't seem to work yet, this should do it!
- New Study in ES&T! Permafrost peatlands accumulate mercury from distant sources, but thaw causes collapse into wetter bogs and fens. Lauren Thompson shows that these bogs, and especially fens, become hotspots for mercury methylation, and potential downstream transport. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
- New study where McKenzie Kuhn, I and co-authors show that accounting for differences among wetland and lake types is crucial for estimating current and future boreal-Arctic methane emissions – out now in Nature Climate Change. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Our modelling of future methane emissions account for both climate warming (through a space-for-time framework) and permafrost thaw (through landscape transitions caused by thaw), and we find that these effects have important interactions – although the direct effect of warming dominates.
- This study uses data from almost 200 studies going back to the 1970s, with data from almost 2000 unique sites. Knowing what it takes to collect this data and publish these individual studies, it is humbling to be able to use their findings in a joint analysis – standing on the shoulder of giants.
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View full threadOur analysis also reveals where effort should be placed to further improve estimates of boreal-Arctic wetland and lake methane emissions, including wintertime methane studies from wetlands, studies of lake methane ebullition, and further refined land cover maps.
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- Perfect day for measuring carbon dioxide and methane emissions from our thawed (former permafrost) fen in northern Alberta. 20 deg C, light breeze and almost no mosquitoes.
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- CBC highlights the issue of greenhouse gas emissions from peatland fires in Canada. www.cbc.ca/news/science...
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- I spent this week collecting river samples in northwestern Canada (Dehcho, Hay, and South Slave regions), an area the size of England with ~4,000 km of driving. And so much of the landscape is burned - we drove hours and hours through charred forests. The last decade has been unprecedented.
- The black lines are the roads which we collect water samples along - shown with the historical fire map you can see that ~half of this large region has burned in the last few years. There are community concerns about impacts of wildfires and permafrost thaw on water and traditional land use.
- The bog gives and the bog takes. Liam Heffernan's PhD site, the Lutose thermokarst big - photos from 2015 and today 10 years later... Note the trees dying in the background due to permafrost thaw, and the growth of Sphagnum mosses covering our once proud boardwalk!
- I have a fully funded PhD position open for start in Jan or May 2026. Field work in peatlands of the Northwest Territories, with lab work to understand potential downstream mobilization of carbon, nutrients, mercury after thaw or wildfire. Reach out for more information, and please send on!
- When the Arctic burns, the soils thaw. How much and for how long? Anna Talucci compiled depth of thaw measurements from 157 sites, now published in ESSD. Main impact occurs 4-10 years after fire, but effects remain 20+ years. Key information to estimate losses of soil C! doi.org/10.5194/essd...
- Reposted by David Olefeldt'We should restore peatlands to slow down the invading Russians' as an idea tells us a lot about the state we are in. www.aeco.earth/blog/peatlan...
- Reposted by David OlefeldtMy perspective “Tree methane exchange in a changing world” is now out in @natrevearthenviron.nature.com rdcu.be/erF4j
- This new map provides a global view of the distribution of a multitude of aquatic ecosystems, including various wetlands. It's a pretty big step forward, and I look forward to seeing how it will be used e.g. to study wetland greenhouse gases. essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...
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- Reposted by David Olefeldt1/3 The new Global Methane Budget is now published, open access. essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...
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- Reposted by David OlefeldtWe're new here! Help us connect with our members and interested followers 😀
- I run a mid-size research group (7 graduate students / staff, 3 field assistants) which focuses on field-based research in northern Canada. Last year (2024-2025) our total expenses were ~CAD$370,000, provided in grants from federal/provincial/industry agencies, and it was spent as shown below.
- In addition, students brought in ~$50,000 in fellowships / grants which offset expenses for my budget. Salaries and transport (truck rental) are my main expenses, followed by equipment and analysis costs.
- Reposted by David OlefeldtJOB ALERT Exciting opportunity for a Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in #PhysicalGeography specialising in #peatland science to join our #Geography department at @uniofmanchester.bsky.social. Full details for the job can be found here: www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...
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- Winter field work at a thermokarst fen in northern Alberta by PhD student Finn Kurylowicz this week - chilly but very successful. The first winter for the eddy covariance set-up and it had collected data on almost all days since late November.
- This resonates with me - and I've seen this happen quickly. Fewer field trips for classes I teach (due to budgets and increased bureaucracy to make them happen) and for field research (more attention to field safety - good! - but more bureaucracy forces less ambitious plans).
- Extinction of experience among ecologists www.cell.com/trends/ecolo.... The impacts that a loss of #fieldwork will have for #science, #ecology and the #biodiversity and #climate crises.
- Reposted by David OlefeldtThere's a postdoc in peatland biogeochemistry advertised on our project by Dolly Kothawala and Gustaf Granath at Uppsala University. I can highly recommend Uppsala as a place to live and work. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...
- Excited to finally announce our new project, funded by Water4All Partnership and led by @hydrokoch.bsky.social. Looking forward to new collaborations and lots of peaty research.
- Reposted by David OlefeldtWe are looking for a grant-funded doctoral resarcher on a project focusing on how tree and shrub expansion into the tundra impact biodiversity and carbon balance @Department of Geosciences and Geography @helsinkiuni.bsky.social! DM me if you are interested, and please share!
- One of my favorite things about #peatlands is their patterning at different scales caused by millennia of interplay between hydrology and peat accumulation - mainly Sphagnum mosses. Spent my Saturday evening looking at satellite images of the Hudson Bay Lowlands - a perfectly reasonable activity…
- The Hudson Bay Lowlands covers approximately ~350,000 km2 (i.e. similar to size of Germany), and it’s been rising out of the ocean since the end of the last glaciation to due isostatic rebound. The former ocean-bottom is very flat and has poor drainage – perfect for the development of peatlands.
- Different species of mosses prefer wetter or drier microhabitats, creating hummocks and hollows over time. Water movement will over time cause self-organization of hummocks into strings stretching perpendicular to the direction of flow.
- Patchy permafrost adds to patterning in colder climates, often raising the surface 1-2 m above its surroundings and causing abrupt shifts in vegetation compared to adjacent non-permafrost. Rapid current permafrost thaw is causing collapse - seen here as bright green patches along permafrost edges
- Reposted by David OlefeldtCongratulations to Weiwei Wang (early career researcher) on her paper in Science out today - 'Canadian forests are more conducive to high-severity fires in recent decades' largely due to increases in fuel aridity. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Reposted by David Olefeldt“It is the first time that we’re seeing this shift at such a large scale, cumulatively across all of the tundra. That’s a pretty big deal,” Sue Natali, a co-author and lead researcher on the study at @woodwellclimate.bsky.social told @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/environment/...
- Reposted by David OlefeldtI'm hiring, two fully funded PhD positions! Come work in Umeå in Arctic Sweden, a leading place for high-latitude ecosystem ecology and carbon biogeochemistry
- First lecture of the semester, and a new course on Water Resource Management. Most of my winter "break" was used to prepare for the course. What are your best examples of Canadian water resource management issues that I should highlight?
- Reposted by David OlefeldtNo doubt an important paper by @goldenwater.bsky.social and others. Headwater systems are a critical interface between groundwater, surface water and the landscape, and the source for downstream waters. Need to continue advancing sci & mgmt of these systems! www.nature.com/articles/s44...
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- I'll be dammed! Next week Jessica Lagroix will present her MSc thesis on the influence of beaver ponds on water chemistry on the Taiga Plains, focusing on methylmercury. Two years of sampling, bushwacking to access sites and avoiding wildfires, but results are really cool TBA! #FieldworkFriday
- Well done Edmonton - 7.30 am and last night's snow has been cleared from the bike path. Much appreciated!
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- New truck for the CAWS research group - last truck lasted 7 years and we put 350,000 km on it. Will this one go further? What podcasts will be popular? Who will get it stuck on a muddy road? Also - infrastructure grants are slow, I budgeted for this truck in 2019 so needless to say I blew my budget!
- Very nice review - a must read for students working on understanding temporal patterns in river water chemistry! Cheers
- For #FieldworkFriday I'm today reminiscing about a 2018 trip with McKenzie Kuhn (UBC) sampling greenhouse gas emissions from peatland ponds near Fort McPherson in northernmost Canada. It's a 3,500 km one-way drive from Edmonton (well worth the drive!). Note the permafrost thaw along pond edges!
- The study required >40,000 km in driving between sites over two years... The study was published in AGU Advances in 2021, in which we found very strong latitudinal trends in the pond greenhouse gas fluxes, with opposing trends in carbon dioxide and methane. doi.org/10.1029/2021...
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- For #FieldworkFriday we're heading to northernmost Alberta and the Hay-Zama wetland, on Dene Tha' traditional lands. Our group is not all about peat, here Sarah and Fiona opportunistically took soil samples across the 35 x 20 km wetland basin during extreme drought to assess soil carbon storage.
- Pancake ice forming on the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton today. Also - I changed to studded tires on my bike for the commute, which was good timing.
- The Hay River in northwestern Canada (with Alexandra Falls in the pictures) is at the center of my groups' research. How will permafrost thaw, wildfires, warming, and droughts affect the mobilization of carbon, nutrients, and mercury from the widespread peatlands in its watershed?
- The Hay River had one of its most severe floodings in the spring of 2022, but since then we have been in an unprecedented drought with extraordinary wildfires in the region. During the drought, the peatlands have become more and more disconnected from the river.
- Warming and permafrost thaw appear to increase the production of solutes (carbon, nutrients, methylmercury) in the peatlands, but severe droughts curtail their downstream mobilization. We're still waiting to see any effect of the 2023 wildfires - perhaps if 2025 is wetter.
- The research is co-produced with the Katlodeeche First Nation and the Dene Tha' First Nation. Check out our recent video for some of our results to date. youtu.be/uBWFNQnyv2Q
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- This is what AI thinks my job looks like. Not quite... but not all wrong either. It's been great seeing all new colleagues joining/connecting here the last few days, and I'm looking forward to seeing conversations about wetlands, water, and greenhouse gases on this platform. Cheers!
- Reposted by David OlefeldtStockholm University is hiring up to 3 Assistant Professors working on Biodiversity su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... utilizing "...recent advances - such as within sequencing, AI, imaging, mass spectrometry, tomography and exposomics - provide new opportunities."
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- Painful scientific illiteracy on display in the province I call home. The governing party celebrates CO2 and removes all emission reduction goals... www.desmog.com/2024/11/02/a...
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- Reposted by David OlefeldtWe're hiring two Assistant Professors (Practice) in Urban Forestry. Come join us in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University. Apply here: jobs.oregonstate.edu/postings/160...
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- The last few days I've helped PhD student Fiona Kurylowicz with her eddy co-variance set-up at a thermokarst fen in the discontinuous permafrost zone. Brilliant fall colors, no bugs, cool but not cold temps. If only the software hadn't done an automatic update which wrecked the data communication...
- Just compiled a database of all the river water quality samples my group has collected over the last 10 years in western Canada... >3000 samples from 450 sites and 10+ studies. Focus on DOC, nutrients, mercury. What should I do with the data???
