The Permafrost Carbon Network held its fifth workshop on Captiva Island, Florida on 16- 17 May, 2013. This workshop included members of the steering committee as well as leads and co-leads of each working group. The purpose of this meeting was to present and discuss progress on synthesis activities, link findings of products from individual working groups into cross-group synthesis activities and to discuss network related items such as data organization or authorship. The CliC project provided travel support for several key international participants to this workshop. Presentations from the workshop are also available on the workshop webpage. Download the Report
The overall objective of the Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon Research Coordination Network (RCN) (http://www.permafrostcarbon.org/) is to link biological carbon (C) cycle research with well-developed networks in the physical sciences focused on the thermal state of permafrost. This interconnection is being used to produce new knowledge through research synthesis that can be used to quantify the role of permafrost C in driving climate change in the 21st century and beyond. This is achieved by synthesizing information in a format that can be assimilated by biospheric and climate models, and that will be contributed to future assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Our ongoing activities to reach this goal are: 1) organization of an interrelated sequence of meetings and working groups designed to synthesize existing permafrost C research, and 2) formation of a consortium of interconnected researchers to disseminate synthesis results about permafrost C to other scientific networks and activities. These two research coordination activities are aimed at developing and disseminating algorithms that encapsulate the new process knowledge and datasets in support of model development.