Partially-drained Thaw Lakes as Hotspots of Biological Activity on the Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska

Abstract:

Thaw lakes cover a large proportion of arctic coastal plains in the US, Canada, and Russia. These lakes are replenished by spring snowmelt and lose water to stream discharge and evapotranspiration during the short arctic summer. While some lakes display nearly static water levels throughout the summer, many fluctuate with some losing more than 50% of their water. We investigated the biogeochemical implications of these water level changes on nutrient fluxes and cycling by sampling several lakes over multiple years and using these data to build a simple lake nutrient cycling model. We find that lakes that lose greater than 20 % of their water display substantially higher nutrient concentrations than lakes with static water levels. The seasonal trend in nutrients, chlorophyll, and other basic water quality parameters suggests low, but positive rates of aquatic ecosystem productivity during the summer. Drained areas on lake margins remained moist for much of the summer and were used extensively by water birds. As lake water levels increased in the fall, a pulse of nutrients entered the lake, likely related to flushing and inundation of this terrestrial ecosystem. Chemical trends along a flowpath from the drained lake outlet into the drainage network suggests continued biogeochemical cycling and the potential importance of drained lake nutrients to downstream environments including river networks and coastal environments. Together, these findings indicate that drained lakes are relatively eutrophic and ecologically-productive, and thus need to be considered to understand nutrient cycling on the arctic coastal plain.