Each spring in the Arctic, the flooding triggered by melting
snow which washes vast amounts of carbon-rich soil from the land
into the streams and ocean which is a process called slumping.
This may not sound like much. Certainly it is localized erosion,
but global warming? That's of particular interest to scientists
studying global warming, because in those waters much of the
carbon that's being released from melting permafrost is oxidized
by bacteria into carbon dioxide, says Rose Cory, an
environmental scientist at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill. Carbon from surface waters amounts to as much as
40% of the total carbon that ultimately gets transferred from
the Arctic to the atmosphere, she says. Cory studies the process
by which organic carbon, trapped in frozen permafrost soils in
the Arctic for thousands of years, may be converted to carbon
dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and the potential role of that
chemical conversion in global warming. "We know that increasing
global temperatures will thaw t