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Six small coastal moorings were deployed in Harrison Bay for approximately 30 days between early August and early September. Two moorings were outfitted with Nortek Aquadopps and optical backscatter sensors and the remainder were outfitted with RBR sensors which recorded some combination of salinity, temperature, pressure, and turbidity. All sensors were mounted within approximately 0.5 meters (m) of the bed to capture boundary-layer dynamics. Turbidity values were converted to total suspended solids concentrations. Wave parameters (significant wave height, peak wave period, and wave direction) were post-processed from Aquadopp data. Shear velocities (used in sediment-transport research) were calculated from current and wave data at the sites where Aquadopps were mounted. Data have been used in support of a publication, "Summertime sediment convergence on the Alaskan Beaufort Shelf and implications for ice rafting." 

Four small coastal moorings were deployed in water depths of ~5-6 meters (m) on the Colville Delta front and one site farther west for a period of approximately one week in Jul/Aug 2021. Moorings were outfitted with sensors to collect a variety of data including water levels (at all sites), turbidity/total suspended solids, water velocity, salinity, temperature, and light intensity. Light intensity measurements were also collected from a vessel-mounted sensor (included in the MM3 data package) to allow for calculation of light attenuation at the mooring. These data are described more fully in a companion publication (Eidam, "Summertime water and particle properties on an ice-influenced Arctic shelf", in prep as of March 2025). 

This dataset includes water-column data collected from the Beaufort Shelf during the open-water seasons in 2020, 2021, and 2022. The 2020 data include water-column profiles (salinity, temperature, depth, turbidity, particle size distributions, particle volume concentrations, and uncorrected clorophyll-a) collected with an RBR CTD/Tu (conductivity, temperature, depth, turbidity) sensor and LISST sensor from R/V Sikuliaq and its workboat. Most sites were in the Harrison Bay region (north of the Colville Delta and Simpson Lagoon) and a few were located farther east. The 2021 and 2022 data include the same CTD/Tu and LISST data that were collected in 2020, but are focused in Harrison Bay and also include profiles of light intensity (photosynthetically active radiation) as well as ADCP (acoustic doppler current profile) profiles from a pole-mounted Nortek Signature 500 kilohertz (kHz) sensor. In 2021, additional data include filtration data (total suspended solids, suspended sediment concentrations, and organic fractions) from water samples and hi-resolution echosounder data from the Nortek ADCP. These data are being incorporated into publications about summertime water-column properties and sediment transport dynamics within Harrison Bay (Eidam et al., pending). 

Providing opportunities for early career researchers to gain leadership experiences in seagoing oceanographic science is critical to maintaining an inclusive and robust research community. While various opportunities exist to attract early career scientists to oceanography through undergraduate research experiences or first-time access to seagoing science, there are notable gaps in helping junior researchers who are already in the oceanographic workforce (junior faculty, research scientists, postdoctoral scholars) step into and embrace leadership roles. This training gap is particularly acute for leadership in field science, especially for remote regions with complicated logistics and unfamiliar platforms and support structures, notably the Arctic and Antarctic. In light of rapid environmental changes occurring at the poles and the importance of these regions in global connectivity, polar-specific training is needed to ensure incoming generations can effectively plan and execute research on icebreakers and ice-capable vessels. Here, we describe two training efforts conducted in 2023 and 2024 specifically tailored to train future leaders in polar seagoing science. 

This dataset contains ascii text files of latitude, longitude, and water depth data which were collected using a pole-mounted multibeam echosounder system from the R/V Ukpik in July-August, 2021. Dr. Emily Eidam was the team lead and Dan Duncan was the multibeam operator. The data were collected along discrete tracklines across Harrison Bay. The general study was seaward of the Colville Delta between Cape Halkett to the west and Oliktok Point to the east, with a maximum seaward extent to water depths of approximately 30 meters (m) (about half to three-quarters of the way across the shelf from the shoreline). The dataset also contains a netcdf file of bathymetric change which was computed as the difference between the combined 2021 and 2022 data contained in this archive and a 1950s dataset which was recently corrected and is publicly available through Zimmerman et al., 2022 (doi.org/10.1016/j.csr.2022.104745). The multibeam data provide information about a rich diversity of seabed features including large and small ice-keel scours, sand waves, strudel scour pits, and unusual scoured substrates. A detailed description of these datasets is provided in an in-preparation manuscript (Eidam et al., Seafloor sediments and morphologic features of Harrison Bay in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea). The bathymetric change data illustrates erosion of the inner and inner-middle shelf over the past ~70 years, including erosion of up to ~3 m near Cape Halkett and on the Colville Delta front. These changes are addressed in detail in Heath, 2024 (Oregon State University Master of Science Thesis, "Sedimentation and Erosion on an Arctic Continental Shelf: Harrison Bay and Colville River Delta, Alaska"). 

Abstract Seasonal sea ice impacts Arctic delta morphology by limiting wave and river influences and altering river‐to‐ocean sediment pathways. However, the long‐term effects of sea ice on delta morphology remain poorly known. To address this gap, 1D morphologic and hydrodynamic simulations were set up in Delft3D to study the 1500‐year development of Arctic deltas during the most energetic Arctic seasons: spring break‐up/freshet, summer open‐water, and autumn freeze‐up. The model focused on the deltaic clinoform (i.e., the vertical cross‐sectional view of a delta) and used a floating barge structure to mimic the effects of sea ice on nearshore waters. From the simulations we find that ice‐affected deltas form a compound clinoform morphology, that is, a coupled subaerial and subaqueous delta separated by a subaqueous platform that resembles the shallow platform observed offshore of Arctic deltas. Nearshore sea ice affects river dynamics and promotes sediment bypassing during sea ice break‐up, forming an offshore depocenter and building a subaqueous platform. A second depocenter forms closer to shore during the open‐water season at the subaerial foreset that aids in outbuilding the subaerial delta and assists in developing the compound clinoform morphology. Simulations of increased wave activity and reduced sea‐ice, likely futures under a warming Arctic climate, show that deltas may lose their shallow platform on centennial timescales by (a) sediment infill and/or (b) wave erosion. This study highlights the importance of sea ice on Arctic delta morphology and the potential morphologic transitions these high‐latitude deltas may experience as the Arctic continues to warm. 

Abstract Suspended sediment fluxes on continental shelves impact geomorphology, habitats, and biogeochemistry. In the coastal Arctic, the rate at which sediment is transported to locations where it can be sequestered also impacts the fate of carbon from thawing permafrost. This study used a numerical model to analyze the role of wave events on open water suspended sediment fluxes over hourly to monthly timescales. A coupled hydrodynamic—sediment transport model, the Regional Ocean Modeling System—Community Sediment Transport Modeling System, was implemented within the Coupled Ocean‐Atmosphere‐Wave‐Sediment Transport (COAWST) Modeling System for the 2020 open water season on the Alaskan Beaufort Sea shelf. Results showed that wave‐ and current‐induced bed shear stresses were frequently capable of resuspending sediment. Waves dominated bed shear stresses in depths shallower than 10 m and currents dominated in depths deeper than 20 m. Suspended sediment flux directions oscillated with the currents, which were eastward on average. However, since large waves tended to occur during westward currents, time‐averaged suspended sediment fluxes on the inner shelf were westward. Sensitivity tests were performed where significant wave heights were (a) set to zero and (b) doubled, which showed that waves increased the fraction of time that sediment could be resuspended by up to 50% and increased westward suspended sediment fluxes on the inner shelf. Overall, the results improve our understanding of how waves impact sediment fluxes on the Beaufort Sea shelf during the open water season and suggest that terrestrially derived sediment may be transported westward along the inner shelf. 

Sediments covering Arctic continental shelves are uniquely impacted by ice processes. Delivery of sediments is generally limited to the summer, when rivers are ice free, permafrost bluffs are thawing, and sea ice is undergoing its seasonal retreat. Once delivered to the coastal zone, sediments follow complex pathways to their final depocenters—for example, fluvial sediments may experience enhanced seaward advection in the spring due to routing under nearshore sea ice; during the open-water season, boundary-layer transport may be altered by strong stratification in the ocean due to ice melt; during the fall storm season, sediments may be entrained into sea ice through the production of anchor ice and frazil; and in the winter, large ice keels more than 20 m tall plow the seafloor (sometimes to seabed depths of 1–2 m), creating a type of physical mixing that dwarfs the decimeter-scale mixing from bioturbation observed in lower-latitude shelf systems. This review summarizes the work done on subtidal sediment dynamics over the last 50 years in Arctic shelf systems backed by soft-sediment coastlines and suggests directions for future sediment studies in a changing Arctic. Reduced sea ice, increased wave energy, and increased sediment supply from bluffs (and possibly rivers) will likely alter marine sediment dynamics in the Arctic now and into the future. 

Abstract Ice formation is generally considered to exclude many particles and most solutes and thus be relatively pure compared to ambient waters. Because river ice forms by a combination of thermal and mechanical processes, some level of sediment entrainment in the ice column is likely, though reports of sediment in river ice are limited. We observed high and sporadic levels of silt and sand in ice of the Kuskokwim and Tanana rivers (Alaska, the United States) during routine field studies. These observations led us to make a more comprehensive survey of sediment entrainment in river ice of the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers and several of their tributaries. We collected and subsampled 48 ice cores from 19 different river locations in March 2023, which included concurrent measurements of water turbidity, velocity, and depth. Approximately 60% of cores contained detectable levels of sediment, averaging 438 mg/L with median concentrations exceeding 1000 mg/L in three cores from the Yukon and Kuskokwim main stems. Many cores had even higher concentrations at certain intervals, with seven cores having subsamples exceeding 2000 mg/L; these were often located in the middle or lower portion of the ice column. Jumble ice, formed mechanically by frazil‐pan jamming during freeze‐up, was generally the best predictor of higher sediment entrainment, and these locations often had higher under‐ice velocities and depths. Our observation of high and widespread sediment entrainment in northern river ice, particularly in jumble‐ice fields, may have implications for sediment transport regimes, ice strength and transportation safety, and how rivers break up in the springtime.