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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. 

Abstract Bank erosion in Arctic rivers helps shape channel geometry, mobilizes carbon from permafrost and influences sediment delivery to the Arctic Ocean. On Alaska's Arctic coastal plain, rivers begin flowing during snowmelt in late spring while extensive river ice persists in channels, such that hydraulics are altered and water is kept cool. The effects of river ice on permafrost bank erosion are poorly understood, primarily due to a dearth of field observations and a lack of river ice in existing models. To address this knowledge gap, we developed a numerical model to simulate the melt of substrate interstitial ice and bank collapse along individual permafrost river banks. We parameterize the model with field observations from riverbanks in three different channels on the Canning River delta, which are disparately impacted by river ice during snowmelt. We explore the bank erosion produced without river ice in the model and with modern river ice model scenarios that we drive with different stages and water temperature boundary conditions. We also compare predicted erosion rates to observations from satellite imagery to validate this approach. In the model, banks are idealized as vertical profiles that rise 1–2 m above the river bed and are comprised of silt‐ to sand‐sized sediment with dense roots in the active layer. Underneath, we generalize bank ice content underneath the active layer to represent ice‐rich permafrost on the river corridor boundaries. The model predicts that these ice‐rich river banks can erode by 2–6 m/yr. Scenarios without ice underpredict erosion in the distributary channels. Scenarios with varying river ice for different deltaic channels produce erosion rates similar to observations. Our results suggest that the prolonged melt of thick river ice in a delta nonlinearly impacts permafrost bank erosion by blocking river discharge to certain branches, heightening stage across the distributary network and locally limiting river water warming. Given expected changes in air temperature and hydrology, future estimates of Arctic river bank erosion could be improved by considering river ice. 

Abstract Considerable debate revolves around the relative importance of rock type, tectonics, and climate in creating the architecture of the critical zone. We demonstrate the importance of climate and in particular the rate of water recharge to the subsurface, using numerical models that incorporate hydrologic flowpaths, chemical weathering, and geomorphic rules for soil production and transport. We track alterations in both solid phase (plagioclase to clay) and water chemistry along hydrologic flowpaths that include lateral flow beneath the water table. To isolate the role of recharge, we simulate dry and wet cases and prescribe identical landscape evolution rules. The weathering patterns that develop differ dramatically beneath the resulting parabolic interfluves. In the dry case, incomplete weathering is shallow and surface parallel, whereas in the wet case, intense weathering occurs to depths approximating the base of the bounding channels, well below the water table. Exploration of intermediate cases reveals that the weathering state of the subsurface is strongly governed by the ratio of the rate of advance of the weathering front itself controlled by the water input rate, and the rate of erosion of the landscape. The system transitions between these end‐member behaviours rather abruptly at a weathering front speed ‐ erosion rate ratio of approximately 1. Although there are undoubtedly direct roles for tectonics and rock type in critical zone architecture, and yet more likely feedbacks between these and climate, we show here that differences in hillslope‐scale weathering patterns can be strongly controlled by climate. 

Abstract. The critical zone (CZ), the dynamic living skin of the Earth, extends from the top of the vegetative canopy through the soil and down to fresh bedrock and the bottom of the groundwater. All humans live in and depend on the CZ. This zone has three co-evolving surfaces: the top of the vegetative canopy, the ground surface, and a deep subsurface below which Earth's materials are unweathered. The network of nine CZ observatories supported by the US National Science Foundation has made advances in three broad areas of CZ research relating to the co-evolving surfaces. First, monitoring has revealed how natural and anthropogenic inputs at the vegetation canopy and ground surface cause subsurface responses in water, regolith structure, minerals, and biotic activity to considerable depths. This response, in turn, impacts aboveground biota and climate. Second, drilling and geophysical imaging now reveal how the deep subsurface of the CZ varies across landscapes, which in turn influences aboveground ecosystems. Third, several new mechanistic models now provide quantitative predictions of the spatial structure of the subsurface of the CZ.Many countries fund critical zone observatories (CZOs) to measure the fluxes of solutes, water, energy, gases, and sediments in the CZ and some relate these observations to the histories of those fluxes recorded in landforms, biota, soils, sediments, and rocks. Each US observatory has succeeded in (i) synthesizing research across disciplines into convergent approaches; (ii) providing long-term measurements to compare across sites; (iii) testing and developing models; (iv) collecting and measuring baseline data for comparison to catastrophic events; (v) stimulating new process-based hypotheses; (vi) catalyzing development of new techniques and instrumentation; (vii) informing the public about the CZ; (viii) mentoring students and teaching about emerging multidisciplinary CZ science; and (ix) discovering new insights about the CZ. Many of these activities can only be accomplished with observatories. Here we review the CZO enterprise in the United States and identify how such observatories could operate in the future as a network designed to generate critical scientific insights. Specifically, we recognize the need for the network to study network-level questions, expand the environments under investigation, accommodate both hypothesis testing and monitoring, and involve more stakeholders. We propose a driving question for future CZ science and a hubs-and-campaigns model to address that question and target the CZ as one unit. Only with such integrative efforts will we learn to steward the life-sustaining critical zone now and into the future.