Nikita Zimov is a scientist who studies the tundra in Siberia
Chapter ONE TUNDRA THE COLDEST ENVIRONMENT In April 2011 Nikita Zimov was in a hurry He jumped into his truck loaded with six live elk He had to get from Novosibirsk a major city in southern Siberia to the Arctic town of Chersky to meet his father Sergey The trip was 2 500 miles 4,000 km and time was not on his side The frozen rivers that served as winter roads in northern Siberia were about to thaw as summer approached He sped along the winding river road He passed many white wooden crosses that marked
Sergey Zimov shows how methane can be stored under frozen lakes
the spots where drivers had died After two weeks and only 25 miles 40 km from his destination the truck's brakes gave out and Zimov hit a snowbank The truck tipped over Luckily neither Zimov nor the six elk were injured He called his father on his cell phone and after a cold and exhausting four hour wait help arrived This the Arctic tundra is the most dangerous territory in the world in terms of climate change Sergey Zimov ecologist at the Northeast Science Station in northern Siberia 2015 REWILDING THE TUNDRA Why did Zimov risk such a perilous journey to deliver six elk The animals were key to a tundra experiment He his father and other scientists from across the world have been conducting this study The Zimovs and their associates had found that Earth's northern permafrost the permanently frozen ground of the tundra contained more than 1 1 trillion short tons 1 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide and methane Those gases are two of the carbon based ingredients that keep Earth warm enough for humanity to survive However current climate change results in warmer temperatures that thaw tundra permafrost As the permafrost thaws large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane may be released into the atmosphere speeding up climate change For more than 20 years Sergey Zimov has worked on an experiment that would return the currently frozen moss and lichen covered ground to the grasslands that existed when mammoths and saber toothed cats roamed more than Permafrost extends downward nearly 13 000 years ago Zimov believes that restoring the 1 476 feet 450 m
