| 1. |
- Abbott, Benjamin W., et al.
(författare)
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Biomass offsets little or none of permafrost carbon release from soils, streams, and wildfire : an expert assessment
- 2016
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 11:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- As the permafrost region warms, its large organic carbon pool will be increasingly vulnerable to decomposition, combustion, and hydrologic export. Models predict that some portion of this release will be offset by increased production of Arctic and boreal biomass; however, the lack of robust estimates of net carbon balance increases the risk of further overshooting international emissions targets. Precise empirical or model-based assessments of the critical factors driving carbon balance are unlikely in the near future, so to address this gap, we present estimates from 98 permafrost-region experts of the response of biomass, wildfire, and hydrologic carbon flux to climate change. Results suggest that contrary to model projections, total permafrost-region biomass could decrease due to water stress and disturbance, factors that are not adequately incorporated in current models. Assessments indicate that end-of-the-century organic carbon release from Arctic rivers and collapsing coastlines could increase by 75% while carbon loss via burning could increase four-fold. Experts identified water balance, shifts in vegetation community, and permafrost degradation as the key sources of uncertainty in predicting future system response. In combination with previous findings, results suggest the permafrost region will become a carbon source to the atmosphere by 2100 regardless of warming scenario but that 65%-85% of permafrost carbon release can still be avoided if human emissions are actively reduced.
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| 2. |
- Björkvald, Louise, et al.
(författare)
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Hydrogeochemistry of Fe and Mn in small boreal streams : The role of seasonality, landscape type and scale
- 2008
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Ingår i: Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. - : Elsevier BV. - 0016-7037 .- 1872-9533. ; 72:12, s. 2789-2804
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Stream water from a stream network of 15 small boreal catchments (0.03–67 km2) in northern Sweden was analyzed for unfiltered (total) and filtered (<0.4 μm) concentrations of iron (Fetot and Fe<0.4) and manganese (Mntot and Mn<0.4). The purpose was to investigate the temporal and spatial dynamics of Fe, Mn and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) as influenced by snow melt driven spring floods and landscape properties, in particular the proportion of wetland area. During spring flood, concentrations of Fetot, Fe<0.4, Mntot, Mn<0.4 and DOC increased in streams with forested catchments (<2% wetland area). In catchments with high coverage of wetlands (>30% wetland area) the opposite behavior was observed. The hydrogeochemistry of Fe was highly dependent on wetlands as shown by the strong positive correlation of the Fetot/Altot ratio with wetland coverage (r2 = 0.89, p < 0.001). Furthermore, PCA analysis showed that at base flow Fetot and Fe<0.4 were positively associated with wetlands and DOC, whereas they were not associated during peak flow at spring flood. The temporal variation of Fe was likely related to varying hydrological pathways. At peak discharge Fetot was associated with variables like silt coverage, which highlights the importance of particulates during high discharge events. For Mn there was no significant correlation with wetlands, instead, PCA analysis showed that during spring flood Mn was apparently more dependent on the supply of minerogenic particulates from silt deposits on the stream banks of some of the streams. The influence of minerogenic particulates on the concentration of, in particular, Mn was greatest in the larger, lower gradient streams, characterized by silt deposits in the near-stream zone. In the small forested streams underlain by till, DOC was of greater importance for the observed concentrations, as indicated by the positive correlation of both Fetot and Fe<0.4 with DOC (r2 = 0.77 and r2 = 0.76, p < 0.001) at the smallest headwater forest site. In conclusion, wetland area and DOC were important for Fe concentrations in this boreal stream network, whereas silt deposits strongly influenced Mn concentrations. This study highlights the importance of studying stream water chemistry from a landscape perspective in order to address future environmental issues concerning mobility of Fe, Mn and associated trace metals.
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| 3. |
- Buffam, Ishi, et al.
(författare)
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Landscape-scale variability of acidity and dissolved organic carbon during spring flood in a boreal stream network
- 2007
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Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research. - 0148-0227 .- 2156-2202. ; 112
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Acidity is well known to influence stream biota, but the less well-studied spatial and temporal distributions of acidity are likely to play a larger ecological role than average values. We present data on spatial variability of chemical parameters contributing to acidity during winter baseflow and spring flood periods in Krycklan, a fourth-order boreal stream network in northern Sweden. Fifteen stream sites were monitored in subcatchments spanning 3 orders of magnitude in size and representing a wide range of percent wetland. At baseflow, pH ranged from 3.9 to 6.5 at the different sites. Baseflow dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration varied by an order of magnitude and was positively correlated with subcatchment percent wetland, resulting in high spatial variability in dissociated organic acids (OA(-)). During spring flood, DOC and OA(-) increased in forested sites and decreased in wetland sites, resulting in reduced spatial variability in their concentrations. In contrast, base cations and strong acid anions diluted throughout the stream network, resulting in decreased acid neutralizing capacity (ANC) at all sites. The spatial variability of base cations increased slightly with high flow. As a result of the changes in OA(-) and ANC, pH dropped at all but the most acidic site, giving a slightly narrowed pH range during spring flood (4.2-6.1). The transition from winter to spring flood stream chemistry could largely be explained by: (1) a shift from mineral to upper riparian organic soil flow paths in forested catchments and (2) dilution of peat water with snowmelt in wetland catchments.
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| 4. |
- Buffam, Ishi, et al.
(författare)
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Spatial heterogeneity of the spring flood acid pulse in a boreal stream network.
- 2008
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 407:1, s. 708-22
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Spatial and temporal patterns in streamwater acidity are ecologically important, but difficult to measure in parallel. Here we present the spatial distribution of streamwater chemistry relevant to acidity from 60 stream sites distributed throughout a 67 km(2) boreal catchment, sampled during a period of winter baseflow (high pH) and during a spring flood episode (low pH). Sites were grouped based on pH level and pH change from winter baseflow to spring flood. The site attributes of each pH group were then assessed in terms of both stream chemistry and subcatchment landscape characteristics. Winter baseflow pH was high throughout most of the stream network (median pH 6.4), but during the spring flood episode stream sites experienced declines in pH ranging from 0-1.6 pH units, resulting in pH ranging from 4.3-6.3. Spring flood pH was highest in larger, lower altitude catchments underlain by fine sorted sediments, and lowest in small, higher altitude catchments with a mixture of peat wetlands and forested till. Wetland-dominated headwater catchments had low but stable pH, while the spring flood pH drop was largest in a group of catchments of intermediate size which contained well-developed coniferous forest and a moderate proportion of peat wetlands. There was a trend with distance downstream of higher pH, acid neutralizing capacity (ANC) and base cation concentrations together with lower dissolved organic carbon (DOC, strongly negatively correlated with pH). This apparent scale-dependence of stream chemistry could be explained by a number of environmental factors which vary predictably with altitude, catchment area and distance downstream-most notably, a shift in surficial sediment type from unsorted till and peat wetlands to fine sorted sediments at lower altitudes in this catchment. As a result of the combination of spatial heterogeneity in landscape characteristics and scale-related processes, boreal catchments like this one can be expected to experience high spatial variability both in terms of chemistry at any given point in time, and in the change experienced during high discharge episodes. Although chemistry patterns showed associations with landscape characteristics, considerable additional variability remained, suggesting that the modeling of dynamic stream chemistry from map parameters will continue to present a challenge. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Erlandsson, Martin, et al.
(författare)
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Thirty-five years of synchrony in the organic matter concentrations of Swedish rivers explained by variation in flow and sulphate
- 2008
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Blackwell Publishing. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 14:5, s. 1191-1198
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Increasing concentrations of organic matter ( OM) in surface waters have been noted over large parts of the boreal/nemoral zone in Europe and North America. This has raised questions about the causes and the likelihood of further increases. A number of drivers have been proposed, including temperature, hydrology, as well as SO42 - and Cl (-) deposition. The data reported so far, however, have been insufficient to define the relative importance of different drivers in landscapes where they interact. Thirty-five years of monthly measurements of absorbance and chemical oxygen demand ( COD), two common proxies for OM, from 28 large Scandinavian catchments provide an unprecedented opportunity to resolve the importance of hypothesized drivers. For 21 of the catchments, there are 18 years of total organic carbon (TOC) measurements as well. Despite the heterogeneity of the catchments with regards to climate, size and land use, there is a high degree of synchronicity in OM across the entire region. Rivers go from widespread trends of decreasing OM to increasing trends and back again three times in the 35-year record. This synchronicity in decadal scale oscillations and long-term trends suggest a common set of dominant OM drivers in these landscapes. Here, we use regression models to test the importance of different potential drivers. We show that flow and SO42 - together can predict most of the interannual variability in OM proxies, up to 88% for absorbance, up to 78% for COD. Two other candidate drivers, air temperature and Cl (-) , add little explanatory value. Declines in anthropogenic SO42 - since the mid-1970s are thus related to the observed OM increases in Scandinavia, but, in contrast to many recent studies, flow emerges as an even more important driver of OM variability. Stabilizing SO42 - levels also mean that hydrology is likely to be the major driver of future variability and trends in OM.
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| 7. |
- Fölster, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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A Novel Environmental Quality Criterion for Acidification in Swedish Lakes - An Application of Studies on the Relationship Between Biota and Water Chemistry
- 2007
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Ingår i: Acid Rain - Deposition to Recovery. - Netherlands : Springer. - 9781402058844 ; , s. 331-338
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The recovery from acidification has led to the demand for more precise criteria for classification of acidification. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has revised Sweden's Ecological Quality Criteria for acidification to improve the correlation between the chemical acidification criteria and biological effects. This paper summarises the most relevant findings from several of the studies commissioned for this revision. The studies included data on water chemistry in 74 reference lakes in southern Sweden with data on fish in 61 of the lakes, as well as data on littoral fauna in 48 lakes. We found that the acidity variable most strongly correlated to the biota was the median pH from the current year. Our results probably do not reflect the mechanisms behind the negative effects of acidity on the biota, but are fully relevant for evaluation of monitoring data. The biogeochemical models used for predicting acidification reference conditions generate a pre-industrial buffering capacity. In order to get an ecologically more relevant criteria for acidification based on pH, we transferred the estimated change in buffering capacity into a corresponding change in pH. A change of 0.4 units was defined as the threshold for acidification. With this criterion a considerably lower number of Swedish lakes were classified as acidified when compared with the present Ecological Quality Criteria.
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| 8. |
- Haei, Mahsa, 1981-, et al.
(författare)
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Cold winter soils enhance dissolved organic carbon concentrations in soil and stream water
- 2010
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Ingår i: Geophysical Research Letters. - : American Geophysical Union. - 0094-8276 .- 1944-8007. ; 37, s. L08501-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Concentrations of dissolved organic carbon ([DOC]) have increased in lakes, streams and rivers across a large part of the northern hemisphere and raised an animated scientific debate about the underlying mechanisms. The lack of consensus about the role of climate in controlling the DOC trends highlights the need for understanding the regulation of surface water DOC. We found that longer and colder winters result in higher [DOC] in a boreal headwater stream during the subsequent snowmelt. In addition, prolonged soil frost increases the spring and summer [DOC] in the riparian soil water, which is a major contributor of stream water DOC in the studied area. We conclude that winter climatic conditions can play a substantial role in controlling stream [DOC] in ways not previously understood. These findings are especially important for northern latitude regions expected to be most affected by climate change. Citation: Haei, M., M. G. Oquist, I. Buffam, A. angstrom gren, P. Blomkvist, K. Bishop, M. Ottosson Lofvenius, and H. Laudon (2010), Cold winter soils enhance dissolved organic carbon concentrations in soil and st ream water, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L08501, doi: 10.1029/2010GL042821.
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| 9. |
- Laudon, Hjalmar, et al.
(författare)
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Impact of changing DOC concentrations on the potential distribution of acid sensitive biota in a boreal stream network
- 2007
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Ingår i: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1027-5606 .- 1607-7938. ; 4, s. 3145-3173
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- DOC concentrations have increased in many surface waters in Europe and North America over the past few decades. As DOC exerts a strong influence on pH this DOC increase could have detrimental effects on acid sensitive biota in many streams and lakes. To investigate the potential implications of changes in the DOC concentration on stream water biota, we have used a mesoscale boreal stream network in northern Sweden as a case study. The network was sampled for stream water chemistry at 60 locations during both winter base flow and spring flood periods, representing the extremes experienced annually in these streams both in terms of discharge and acidity. The effect of changing DOC on pH was modeled for all sampling locations using an organic acid model, with input DOC concentrations for different scenarios adjusted by between –30% and +50% from measured present concentrations. The resulting effect on pH was then used to quantify the proportion of stream length in the catchment with pH below the acid thresholds of pH 5.5 and pH 5.0. The results suggest that a change in stream water DOC during base flow would have only a limited effect on pH and hence on the stream length with pH below the acid thresholds. During the spring flood on the other hand a change in DOC would strongly influence pH and the stream length with pH below the acid thresholds. For example an increase in DOC concentration of 30% at all sites would increase the proportion of stream length with pH below 5.5 from 37% to 65%, and the proportion of stream length with pH below 5.0 would increase from 18% to 27%. The results suggest that in poorly-buffered high DOC waters, even a marginal change in the DOC concentration could impact acid sensitive biota in a large portion of the aquatic landscape.
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| 10. |
- Laudon, Hjalmar, et al.
(författare)
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Patterns and Dynamics of Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) in Boreal Streams : The Role of Processes, Connectivity, and Scaling
- 2011
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Ingår i: Ecosystems (New York. Print). - New York, NY : Springer. - 1432-9840 .- 1435-0629. ; 14:6, s. 880-893
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We bring together three decades of research from a boreal catchment to facilitate an improved mechanistic understanding of surface water dissolved organic carbon (DOC) regulation across multiple scales. The Krycklan Catchment Study encompasses 15 monitored nested research catchments, ranging from 3 to 6900 ha in size, as well as a set of monitored transects of forested and wetland soils. We show that in small homogenous catchments, hydrological functioning provides a first order control on the temporal variability of stream water DOC. In larger, more heterogeneous catchments, stream water DOC dynamics are regulated by the combined effect of hydrological mechanisms and the proportion of major landscape elements, such as wetland and forested areas. As a consequence, streams with heterogeneous catchments undergo a temporal switch in the DOC source. In a typical boreal catchment covered by 10-20% wetlands, DOC originates predominantly from wetland sources during low flow conditions. During high flow, the major source of DOC is from forested areas of the catchment. We demonstrate that by connecting knowledge about DOC sources in the landscape with detailed hydrological process understanding, an improved representation of stream water DOC regulation can be provided. The purpose of this study is to serve as a framework for appreciating the role of regulating mechanisms, connectivity and scaling for understanding the pattern and dynamics of surface water DOC across complex landscapes. The results from this study suggest that the sensitivity of stream water DOC in the boreal landscape ultimately depends on changes within individual landscape elements, the proportion and connectivity of these affected landscape elements, and how these changes are propagated downstream.
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