Monhonval, Arthur; Opfergelt, Sophie; Mauclet, Elisabeth; Pereira, Benoît; Vandeuren, Aubry; Grosse, Guido; Schirrmeister, Lutz; Fuchs, Matthias; Kuhry, Peter; Strauss, Jens (2020): Yedoma domain Mineral Concentrations Assessment (YMCA) [dataset]. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.922724

Mineral elements play a crucial role for organic carbon stabilization, which is key for organic carbon mineralization rates in soils. With thawing permafrost, especially in ice-rich regions such as the Yedoma domain, vast amounts of organic carbon previously stored in deep frozen deposits are unlocked and therefore available to undergo microbial mineralization leading to potential carbon dioxide and methane emissions. Mineral elements interfere with organic carbon degradation through various processes: i) mineral protection (aggregation, adsorption, and complexation) stabilizes organic carbon and mitigates its mineralization, and ii) change in mineral nutrients availability affects microorganisms growth and metabolic activity. Despite huge efforts to assess organic carbon stocks and lability in permafrost regions, there is a lack of studies on the mineral component assessment, which we aim to close with this dataset. Here, we provide a large-scale Yedoma domain Mineral Concentrations Assessment (YMCA) dataset of never thawed (since deposition) ice-rich Yedoma permafrost and previously thawed and partly refrozen Alas deposits. We used a portable X-ray fluorescence device (pXRF) for Si, Al, Fe, Ca, K, Ti, Mn, Zn, Sr and Zr concentration measurements on 1,292 sediment samples. Portable XRF measured concentrations trueness was calibrated using standard alkaline fusion and ICP-OES measurement from a subset of 144 samples (R² from 0.725 to 0.996). This methodology lead to the creation of the Yedoma domain Mineral Concentration Assessment (YMCA) dataset, a necessary step to estimate mineral element stocks in never thawed Yedoma and previously thawed Alas deposits. Practically, the YMCA dataset is organized as follow: (i) all site and sample properties: sample ID, type of deposit, site location, profile ID, GPS coordinates, country, lithology, unconsolidated sediment type, geological epoch, samples depth below surface level (b.s.l) or height above sea/river level (a.s.l), sediment characteristics, bulk density, gravimetric and absolute ice content, total organic carbon content; (ii) the Si, Al, Fe, Ca, K, Ti, Mn, Zn, Sr and Zr concentrations (corrected based on linear regressions) in Yedoma and Alas deposits (n=1292).