I was excited to learn that our long awaited sea ice biogeochemistry review was published today in the journal Elementa. Many of the contributors to the project are members of the SCOR working group Biogeochemical Exchange Processes at Sea Ice Interfaces (BEPSII). The review anchors a special edition of Elementa, titled after the working group and slated to appear later this year.
The topics covered by the review reflect the authors list, that is, it’s a pretty mixed bag. There’s something in there for just about everyone; topics range from eddy covariance measurements above sea ice, to standard T/S measurements in sea ice, to nucleic acid extraction from sea ice. The latter bit was my contribution and meshes well with a review I’m authoring for the Elementa special edition on the link between the taxonomy of the sea ice microbial community and likely biogeochemistry-influencing metabolisms in sea ice. When putting the section together I was actually surprised at how few studies have undertaken molecular analyses of the sea ice microbial community. I’ve been using molecular methods on sea ice since 2009, and have cited these various studies extensively, but I never actually sat down and listed them out before. On one hand its nice to know that so much remains unknown, on the other hand its a little alarming that, given the advanced state of the field in other environments, molecular biology has been so slow to gain traction on sea ice (no pun intended – sea ice isn’t really that slick).
At any rate, thanks to lead author Lisa Miller for pushing this behemoth through and thanks to the BEPSII working group for letting a junior scientist(s) take a role!
