PARTNERS Project Arctic River Biogeochemical Data

As the precursor to the Arctic Great Rivers Observatory projects (Arctic-GRO), the PARTNERS project (NSF-OPP-0229302) was one of 18 proposals funded in 2002 in response to the National Science Foundation - Arctic System Science (NSF-ARCSS) Arctic Freshwater Cycle: Land/Upper-Ocean Linkages solicitation. The PARTNERS project focused on the export and fate of water and water-borne constituents from the pan-Arctic watershed, through the establishment of major field sampling programs at downstream stations on the six largest rivers within the pan-Arctic domain; the Yenisey, Ob', Lena, and Kolyma Rivers in Siberia and the Yukon and Mackenzie Rivers in North America. The project established and implemented a set of standard protocols across all rivers, and undertook directed sample collections during the spring freshet, and winter (under-ice) periods, in addition to the more commonly-sampled winter months. As a result, the PARTNERS framework, and data that it generated, enabled a significant step forward in our understanding of large, Arctic rivers. International collaborations were, and continue to be, key to the success of this work. In this collaborative spirit, the initial project was named PARTNERS (Pan-Arctic River Transport of Nutrients, Organic Matter and Suspended Sediments) although many more constituents and isotopes were collected than this name implies. Biogeochemical data generated during the PARTNERS project are provided here. Data generated during the subsequent Arctic GRO projects are provided in sister pages on the Arctic Data Center site.