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Save northern high-latitude catchments

Nature Geoscience volume 10, pages 324–325 (2017)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Northern freshwaters are changing rapidly in response to global warming and human perturbation. Such change is often abrupt and unexpected: catchment storage and release of water is inherently nonlinear. Being able to understand and predict these ecosystems is essential in order to sustain their services and ensure social prosperity in this rapidly changing region. Nevertheless, more and more of the small research catchments in high latitudes are being shut down. Here, we make the case for reversing this trend to sustain long-term catchment research in the north.

One of the most alarming aspects of the decline in observations of the cold northern regions is that it is contemporaneous with rapid warming. Recent observations show record-breaking temperatures year-on-year in the Arctic2. All components of the hydrological cycle have been affected by this warming: changes in the distribution and duration of snow cover and permafrost3; shorter and milder winters4; increased winter flows with associated changes in nutrient fluxes5; and elevated concentrations of dissolved organic carbon concentrations6. The observed changes in dissolved organic carbon concentrations are of particular concern because soil organic carbon stocks of Arctic and boreal regions are orders of magnitude more sensitive to temperature increase than those of any other biome7.

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Figure 1: Decline in high-latitude research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Ecology and Management, SLU, 901 83, Umeå, Sweden

    Hjalmar Laudon

  2. Environment and Climate Change Canada, Saskatoon, S7N 3H5, Saskatchewan, Canada

    Christopher Spence

  3. Department of Geography, Trent University, K9J 7B8, Ontario, Canada

    Jim Buttle

  4. School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, L8S 4K1, Ontario, Canada

    Sean K. Carey

  5. Global Institute for Water Security, National Hydrology Research Centre, University of Saskatchewan, S7N 3H5, Saskatchewan, Canada

    Jeffrey J. McDonnell

  6. Department of Geosciences, Boise State University, Boise, 83725, Idaho, USA

    James P. McNamara

  7. Northern Rivers Institute, School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3UF, Aberdeen, UK

    Chris Soulsby & Doerthe Tetzlaff

Authors
  1. Hjalmar Laudon
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  2. Christopher Spence
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  3. Jim Buttle
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  4. Sean K. Carey
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  5. Jeffrey J. McDonnell
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  6. James P. McNamara
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  7. Chris Soulsby
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  8. Doerthe Tetzlaff
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Correspondence to Hjalmar Laudon.

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Laudon, H., Spence, C., Buttle, J. et al. Save northern high-latitude catchments. Nature Geosci 10, 324–325 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2947

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