Stordalen Mire (elevation 351 m) is a

mire A mire, peatland, or quagmire is a wetland area dominated by living peat-forming plants. Mires arise because of incomplete decomposition of organic matter, usually litter from vegetation, due to water-logging and subsequent anoxia. All types ...

which lies in the subarctic region in northernmost Sweden. It is 10 km east of the town of Abisko close to Lake

Torneträsk Torneträsk or Torne träsk (; Saami: ; Finnish and fit, Tornio or ) is a lake in Kiruna Municipality, Lapland, Norrbotten County in Sweden, in the Scandinavian Mountains. ''Träsk'' is the local word for ''lake'' (in Standard Swedish it me ...

. It is a 25 ha

palsa Palsas are peat mounds with a permanently frozen peat and mineral soil core. They are a typical phenomenon in the polar and subpolar zone of discontinuous permafrost. One of their characteristics is having steep slopes that rises above the mire ...

mire, which is common in the discontinuous permafrost zone. The mire has two major topographical features: elevated palsas and depressions. The palsas are dry,

ombrotrophic Ombrotrophic ("cloud-fed"), from Ancient Greek ὄμβρος (''ómvros'') meaning "rain" and τροφή (''trofí'') meaning "food"), refers to soils or vegetation which receive all of their water and nutrients from precipitation, rather than ...

plateaus (or hummocks) with permafrost cores that raise the peat surface above its surroundings that is the wet

minerotrophic Minerotrophic refers to environments that receive nutrients primarily through groundwater that flows through mineral-rich soils or rock,Environment Canada (2014). Ontario wetland evaluation system: Northern Manual, 1st edition, version 3.2. Queen’ ...

depressions, largely permafrost free and water saturated. The small-scale topography is often very patchy in its structure, creating an environment where localities nearby each other have distinct differences in moisture, permafrost and nutrient status, which creates differences in vegetation types. Of these subhabitats the vegetation in the dry parts consists mainly of mosses, lichens and dwarf shrubs, whereas the wet parts are dominated by sphagnum or tall graminoids. A peat layer up to 3 m deep covers most of the area and is an indication of a net carbon accumulation over the past 5000 years. In the areas underlying by permafrost the active layer reaches a thickness of about 60 cm in the late summer. The mire experiences thermokarst erosion, with the ongoing permafrost thawing that leads to degradation and collapse of the palsa structure, converting it into the wetter surface types. To the east the mire is bordered by the shallow Lake Villasjön (max depth 1.3 m) whereas it is in general largely surrounded by mountain birch forest. In 2018

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

journal published a study which used

metagenomics Metagenomics is the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental or clinical samples by a method called sequencing. The broad field may also be referred to as environmental genomics, ecogenomics, community genomics or microb ...

and genome binning to assemble 1,529 metagenome-assembled genomes from 214 samples from a permafrost thaw gradient from Stordalen mire.

References

{{coord, 68, 21, N, 19, 20, E, display=title Kiruna Bogs of Sweden Palsas Patterned grounds Landforms of Norrbotten County Lakes of Norrbotten County