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Understanding aquatic habitat and water resource responses to rapid and ongoing changes in both climate and land-use provide the basis for monitoring physical processes in ten streams and their watersheds in the northeastern portion of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A). Streams selected for monitoring were originally based on planned development in their upstream catchments and to represent reference (undeveloped) conditions. Monitoring periods for each station (up to 15 years) vary according to adaptive management of water resources in response to broader NPR-A management planning as well as alignment with proposed and ongoing monitoring efforts in Arctic Alaska. Stream discharge and water temperature data provide basic information to characterize physical regimes and variability among drainage units with respect to flood hazards, responses to land and permafrost dynamics, and connectivity and suitability of habitat for fish and other aquatic organism. Evaluating potential impacts of petroleum development primarily in the from lake water extraction, roads, and oil drilling and transport infrastructure are also an intended use of the data and reason for maintaining these monitoring stations. These data also support basic scientific studies of several National Science Foundation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife funded projects to characterize and understand the Arctic system. Data collection was primarily supported by the Bureau of Land Management. 

This set of eleven lakes located in the Fish Creek Watershed in northern Alaska have been monitored for varying periods of time starting as early as 2011 as part of the Fish Creek Watershed Observatory (http://www.fishcreekwatershed.org/) and in coordination with several NSF supported projects. Lakes were primarily selected for long-term monitoring because of interest in water supply for industrial activities and corresponding ecosystem services along with dynamics related to climate change and variability. These data include basic lake attributes of water surface elevation and water temperature at the lake bed of interest to studies of water balance, aquatic habitat, and permafrost stability. In some cases, additional data or studies have been completed on some of these lakes which are reported separately in other datasets or scientific papers or reports. 

Abstract Lakes set in arctic permafrost landscapes can be susceptible to rapid drainage and downstream flood generation. Of many thousands of lakes in northern Alaska, hundreds have been identified as having high drainage potential directly to river systems and 18 such drainage events have been documented since 1955. In 2018 we began monitoring a large lake with high drainage potential as part of a long‐term hydrological observation network designed to evaluate impacts of land use and climate change. In early June 2022, surface water was observed flowing over a 30‐m wide bluff, with active headward erosion of ice‐rich permafrost soils apparent by late June. This overflow point breached rapidly in early July, draining almost the entire lake within 12 h and generating a 191 m³/s flood to a downstream creek. Water level and turbidity sensors and time‐lapse cameras captured this rapid lake‐drainage event at high resolution. A wind‐driven surface seiche and warming waters following ice‐out helped trigger the initial thermomechanical breach. We estimate at least 600 MT of lake sediment was eroded, mobilized, and transported downstream. A flood wave peaking at 42 m³/s arrived 14 h after the initial breach at a river gauge 9‐km downstream. Comparing this event with three other quantified arctic lake‐drainage floods suggests that lake surface area coupled with drainage gradient height can predict outburst flood magnitude. Using this relationship we estimated future flood hazards from the 146 lakes in the Arctic Coastal Plain of northern Alaska (ACP) with high drainage potential, of which 20% are expected to generate outburst floods exceeding 100 m³/s to downstream rivers. This fortunate and detailed drainage‐event observation adds to a growing body of research on the impact of lakes on arctic hydrology, hazard forecasting in a region with an increasing human footprint, and broader processes of landscape evolution in arctic lowlands.