Kuparuk River Discharge, Alaska, 2013-2015

Understanding the impacts of climate change on freshwater ecosystems is highly dependent on quantifying the associated changes in instream temperatures. However, this can be complicated because these temperatures are related to both changing meteorology (e.g., air temperature and precipitation) and hydrology (e.g., instream flows and lateral inflows). The ability to predict climate related changes on instream thermal regimes in Arctic streams is limited by the minimal understanding of key processes and the availability of data to quantify heat fluxes. The investigators hypothesized that the dominant heat fluxes within Arctic streams are similar to those in temperate climates but that the relative magnitude of the heat fluxes differ, and that quantification of lateral inflows is key in predicting water temperatures. To test this hypothesis, they would addressed three research questions regarding 1) the changing importance of key heat fluxes throughout the warm season; 2) the importance of lateral inflows to understanding instream temperature regimes; and 3) the sensitivity of instream temperatures to climate change drivers. These data provide information regarding the flow regimes throughout the Kuparuk Basin that are used within instream temperature modeling under varied flow conditions.