Alaska Section, American Water Resources Association

Michael R. Lilly, Alaska Section AWRA Northern-Region Director

I would like to invite you to the November Brown-Bag presentation by Jim McNamara. Jim's talk should be of interest to hydrologists working in Arctic and sub-Arctic hydrology environments.

November 1996 Alaska Section AWRA
Norther Region Brown Bag Lunch Meeting Presentation

Jim McNamara, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
"Streamflow hydrology in the Kuparuk River basin, Arctic Alaska"

Nearly all biological and physical aspects of Arctic ecosystems are influenced by the ubiquitous the presence of permafrost. The patterns of streamflow as manifested in the characteristics of storm hydrographs are no exception. As part of an interdisciplinary effort to quantify the mass and energy fluxes from a large arctic area, we investigated the streamflow hydrology of the Kuparuk River basin in Northern Alaska. In this paper, we describe the characteristics of annual hydrographs and individual storm hydrographs, assess the influence that permafrost has on those characteristics, and make comparisons to rivers in regions without permafrost.

The presence of permafrost has significant influences on the timing and magnitude of storm flow. Relative to hydrographs in temperate basins, typical storm hydrographs in the Kuparuk River basin have fast initial response times, long time lags between the hyetographs and hydrographs, extended recessions, and a high runoff/precipitation ratios due to the diminished storage caused by permafrost. These differences in flow characteristics may amount to significant differences in ecosystem functions including in the transfer of nutrients across the terrestrial-aquatic boundary, and the patterns of mass and energy delivery to the oceans.