Measured discharge, hydrochemical parameters and computed fluxes (DOC, DN, solutes, suspended sediment) of a small Low Arctic watershed on Herschel Island (2014-2016)

DOI

Coastal ecosystems in the Arctic are affected by climate change. As summer rainfall frequency and intensity are projected to increase in the future, more organic matter, nutrients and sediment could be mobilized and transported into the coastal nearshore zones. However, knowledge of current processes and future changes is limited. We investigated streamflow dynamics and the impacts of summer rainfall on lateral fluxes in a small coastal catchment on Herschel Island in the western Canadian Arctic. For the summer monitoring periods of 2014-16, mean dissolved organic matter (DOM) flux over 17 days amounted to 82.7 ± 30.7 kg km-2 and mean total dissolved solids flux to 5252 ± 1224 kg km-2. Flux of suspended sediment (SS) were 7245 kg km-2 in 2015, and 369 kg km**-2 in 2016. We found that 2.0 % of SS was composed of particulate organic carbon. Data and hysteresis analysis suggests a limited supply of sediments; their interannual variability is most likely caused by short-lived localized disturbances. In contrast, our results imply that DOC is widely available throughout the catchment and exhibits positive linear relationship with runoff. We hypothesize that increased projected rainfall in the future will result in a similar increase of DOC fluxes.

Water samples were collected at the outflow of Ice Creek West on Herschel Island, Yukon Territory, Canada in the summers of 2014, 2015 and 2016 using an automatic water sampler (ISCO 3700).

Supplement to: Coch, Caroline; Lamoureux, Scott F; Knoblauch, Christian; Eischeid, Isabell; Fritz, Michael; Obu, Jaroslav; Lantuit, Hugues (2018): Summer rainfall DOC, solute and sediment fluxes in a small Arctic coastal catchment on Herschel Island (Yukon Territory, Canada). Arctic Science

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.888180
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1139/AS-2018-0010
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.888180
Provenance
Creator Coch, Caroline ORCID logo; Lamoureux, Scott F ORCID logo; Knoblauch, Christian ORCID logo; Eischeid, Isabell; Fritz, Michael ORCID logo; Obu, Jaroslav ORCID logo; Lantuit, Hugues ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2018
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Supplementary Publication Series of Datasets; Collection
Format application/zip
Size 5 datasets
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-138.899 LON, 69.576 LAT); Herschel Island, Yukon Territory, Canada
Temporal Coverage Begin 2014-07-31T19:29:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2015-09-13T21:00:00Z