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Alaska Section, American Water Resources Association Michael R. Lilly, Alaska Section AWRA Northern-Region Director I would like to invite you to the February 1997 Brown-Bag presentation by Robert McLean, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Robert's talk should be of interest to hydrologists and environmental engineers working with the new "Watershed" approaches being proposed by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. The Caribou-Poker Creek Research Watershed (CPCRW), located North of Fairbanks, is part of the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network of National sites sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The CPCRW has had a long history of support from multiple federal and state agencies, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This "index watershed" provides important information on processes associated with Interior Alaska hydrologic systems. February 1997 Alaska Section AWRA, Norther Region Brown Bag Lunch Meeting Presentation Robert McLean, University of Alaska Fairbanks I collected soil, stream and ground-water samples from two second-order basins at Caribou-Poker Creeks Research Watershed. Both basins are similar in size but one has considerably more permafrost (50% by area) than the other (3%). The permafrost dominated stream has a more flashy hydrology, lower stream conductivity and exports almost three times the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) than the permafrost free stream (9.78 and 3.79 kg.ha-1.yr-1). The presence of permafrost maintains a high perched water table which reduces groundwater input to the stream and increases the input of shallow subsurface flows rich in DOC. |