Stream and river summertime water quality, carbon, nutrients, isotopes, gases, and constituent export in 33 permafrost-affected watersheds across 4 ecoregions in the western Canadian Arctic (June-August, 2015)

Recent models indicate disproportionate future carbon emissions from abrupt permafrost thaw features, which are widespread across the circumpolar north and occupy only a fractional area of this vast terrain. Yet, hydrologic export of thawed permafrost carbon is hypothesized to significantly offset the terrestrial component of net ecosystem carbon balance. Progress toward understanding these feedbacks to global climate change is limited by a scarcity of observational studies which quantify hydrologic carbon fluxes and underlying physiographic drivers across thaw-susceptible terrains. To reduce this uncertainty, in this study we directly measured summertime water quality, carbon, nutrients, isotopes, gases, and constituent export in 33 watersheds across a physiographic transect in the western Canadian Arctic which intersects a global hotspot of abrupt permafrost thaw. The overarching objective of this research is to to understand how geology and landscape evolution since the last glacial maximum have shaped modern-day variation in aquatic carbon sources, fluxes, and ecosystem carbon balance.