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Abstract Rock glaciers dominate the cryosphere in mid‐latitude alpine settings, yet their activity and their histories remain challenging to constrain. We focus on the Thomas Lake rock glacier on Mt. Sopris in Colorado, USA. We measure surface velocities by feature tracking of image pairs and document Holocene10Be exposure ages on surface debris. The surface speeds average 0.8 m/yr and peak at 2 m/yr in a steep reach. Exposure ages range from 1.4 to 13.2 kyr and monotonically increase down‐glaciers. Ages exceeding 6 kyr occur in the bottom quarter of the landform, coinciding with sporadic tree cover. These constraints constrain a numerical model of Holocene rock glacier activity. In our model, surface velocity is entirely explained by the deformation of the ice‐rich core with the extra load of the rocky carapace. Surface mass balance is simplified to an accumulation area of ice and debris equivalent to the avalanche cone, and very low, uniform ablation in the remaining rock glacier where rock cover minimizes melt. Climate drives the activity through a history of ice accumulation in the avalanche cone. Matching the observed age and speed structure requires: (a) Early Holocene growth of the rock glacier, (b) low accumulation during the middle Holocene warm period (Hypsithermal), and (c) two Neoglacial accumulation pulses, the most recent being the Little Ice Age. Pulses travel down the valley as kinematic waves, re‐activating the landform. The headwall retreat rate of 4 mm/yr, inferred from rocky layer thickness and surface speed, far outpaces bedrock down wearing rates.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available April 1, 2026
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Time lapse photography is a powerful tool to detect seasonal and interannual change in remote locations. In 2008, a time lapse camera was installed at Niwot Ridge, below D1, with a view overlooking Green Lake 4. The resulting photos give a view into the seasonal evolution of ice and snow cover over the Green Lakes Valley.more » « less
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This dataset describes the chemical composition of water samples collected from the Canning River, Alaska from 2021-2024. Samples were collected from various locations throughout the catchment, spanning the headwaters in the Brooks Range to the coastal plain near the Beaufort Sea. The purpose of these data are to understand the spatial and temporal patterns of water chemistry changes as they are related to chemical weathering, organic carbon mobilization, and permafrost processes.more » « less
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Even though neighborhoods are built for people, lots of wild animals also call these places home. You might have seen a squirrel, a fox, or a deer munching on your garden or running down your street. Living near people gives some animals food and places to live, but it can also cause problems for both animals and people. Sometimes people do not agree about what to do about the animals that live near them. We were curious about how people and wild animals live together and decided to investigate. We studied how people make decisions about deer in the suburbs of Massachusetts, where some people think there are too many deer and others are not so sure. We discovered that people often disagree, and politics matters. Paying attention to this disagreement can help people work together and make choices that let wild animals and people to live together with fewer problems.more » « less
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Beddoe, Riley; Karunaratne, Kumari (Ed.)Permafrost holds more than twice the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere, but this large carbon reservoir is vulnerable to thaw and erosion under a rapidly changing Arctic climate. Convective storms are becoming increasingly common during Arctic summers and can amplify runoff and erosion. These extreme events, in concert with active layer deepening, may accelerate carbon loss from the Arctic landscape. However, we lack measurements of carbon fluxes during these events. Rivers are sensitive to physical, chemical, and hydrological perturbations, and thus are excellent systems for studying landscape responses to thunderstorms. We present observations from the Canning River, Alaska, which drains the northern Brooks Range and flows across a continuous permafrost landscape to the Beaufort Sea. During summer 2022 and 2023 field campaigns, we opportunistically monitored river discharge, sediment, and organic carbon fluxes during several thunderstorms. During one notable storm, river discharge nearly doubled from ~130 m3/s to ~240 m3/s, suspended sediment flux increased 70-fold, and the particulate organic carbon (POC) flux increased 90-fold relative to non-storm conditions. Taken together, the river exported ~16 metric tons of POC over one hour of this sustained event, not including the additional flux of woody debris. Furthermore, the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) flux nearly doubled. Although these thunderstorm-driven fluxes are short-lived (hours to days), they play an outsized role in exporting organic carbon from Arctic rivers. Understanding how these extreme events impact river water, sediment, and carbon dynamics will help predict how Arctic climate change will modify the global carbon cycle.more » « less
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GEOTRACES is an international program that has benefited from contributions by investigators in 35 nations. The program mission is to identify processes and quantify fluxes that control the distributions of key trace elements and isotopes in the ocean and to establish the sensitivity of these distributions to changing environmental conditions. This perspective first summarizes the historical motivation for the program, and then describes selected research highlights, focusing on recent findings related to iron. The patchy distribution of iron in the ocean indicates a short residence time, at the low end of the range of residence times estimated in models. Iron removal from the ocean must, therefore, be rapid. Recent results from the North Atlantic Ocean suggest that the formation of particulate authigenic iron phases may be a factor contributing to iron removal that is faster than previously thought. This article also identifies several areas where advancements are expected through modeling and synthesis efforts.more » « less
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Species distribution models, also known as ecological niche models or habitat suitability models, have become commonplace for addressing fundamental and applied biodiversity questions. Although the field has progressed rapidly regarding theory and implementation, key assumptions are still frequently violated and recommendations inadvertently overlooked. This leads to poor models being published and used in real‐world applications. In a structured, didactic treatment, we summarize what in our view constitute the ten most problematic issues, or hazards, negatively affecting implementation of correlative approaches to species distribution modeling (specifically those that model suitability by comparing the environments of a species' occurrence records with those of a background or pseudoabsence sample). For each hazard, we state relevant assumptions, detail problems that arise when violating them, and convey straightforward existing recommendations. We also discuss five major outstanding questions of active current research. We hope this contribution will promote more rigorous implementation of these valuable models and stimulate further advancements.more » « less
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This dataset contains measurements of river discharge, suspended sediment, and organic carbon fluxes in the Canning River, Alaska during one field campaign from 28 June to 10 July 2022 and a second field campaign from 21 July to 2 August 2023. The purpose of this dataset is to demonstrate the impact of summer convective storms on river suspended sediment and particulate organic carbon fluxes in Arctic Rivers. During the 2022 field campaign, we rafted down the Canning River starting on the upper Canning within the headwaters and ending near the mouth at the Beaufort Sea coast. During this campaign, we selected five locations along the active channel to conduct Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) surveys to measure river discharge and sample the river water for suspended sediment and particulate organic carbon, where T1 is the farthest upstream transect and T5 is the farthest downstream. During the 2023 field campaign, we collected instantaneous river discharge measurements of the Canning River in the headwaters at the Marsh Fork Bench Airstrip, at the Staines Airstrip, and on the Staines branch of the Canning River delta. We observed several thunderstorms during these field campaigns, during which the river water level and suspended load increased dramatically, prompting us to sample river suspended sediment during these events. This dataset includes ADCP measurements of river water discharge, suspended sediment concentrations, particulate and dissolved organic carbon concentrations, woody debris flux measurements, and estimates of instantaneous fluxes.more » « less
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