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    River export of nutrients and organic matter from the North Slope of Alaska to the Beaufort Sea

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    Date
    2014-02-28
    Author
    McClelland, James W.  Concept link
    Townsend-Small, Amy  Concept link
    Holmes, Robert M.  Concept link
    Pan, Feifei  Concept link
    Stieglitz, Marc  Concept link
    Khosh, Matt  Concept link
    Peterson, Bruce J.  Concept link
    Metadata
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    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/6681
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1002/2013WR014722
    DOI
    10.1002/2013WR014722
    Keyword
     River; Coastal; Arctic; Nutrients; Carbon; Nitrogen 
    Abstract
    While river-borne materials are recognized as important resources supporting coastal ecosystems around the world, estimates of river export from the North Slope of Alaska have been limited by a scarcity of water chemistry and river discharge data. This paper quantifies water, nutrient, and organic matter export from the three largest rivers (Sagavanirktok, Kuparuk, and Colville) that drain Alaska's North Slope and discusses the potential importance of river inputs for biological production in coastal waters of the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. Together these rivers export ∼297,000 metric tons of organic carbon and ∼18,000 metric tons of organic nitrogen each year. Annual fluxes of nitrate-N, ammonium-N, and soluble reactive phosphorus are approximately 1750, 200, and 140 metric tons per year, respectively. Constituent export from Alaska's North Slope is dominated by the Colville River. This is in part due to its larger size, but also because constituent yields are greater in the Colville watershed. River-supplied nitrogen may be more important to productivity along the Alaskan Beaufort Sea coast than previously thought. However, given the dominance of organic nitrogen export, the potential role of river-supplied nitrogen in support of primary production depends strongly on remineralization mechanisms. Although rivers draining the North Slope of Alaska make only a small contribution to overall river export from the pan-arctic watershed, comparisons with major arctic rivers reveal unique regional characteristics as well as remarkable similarities among different regions and scales. Such information is crucial for development of robust river export models that represent the arctic system as a whole.
    Description
    Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Water Resources Research 50 (2014): 1823–1839, doi:10.1002/2013WR014722.
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    • Ecosystems Center
    Suggested Citation
    Water Resources Research 50 (2014): 1823–1839
     

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