From The University of California-Davis
5.20.24
Emily C. Dooley
Media Contacts:
Brett A. Poulin
UC Davis Department of Environmental Toxicology
bapoulin@ucdavis.edu
Jon O’Donnell,
National Park Service,
jaodonnell@nps.gov
Emily C. Dooley,
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences,
530-650-6807,
ecdooley@ucdavis.edu
Kat Kerlin,
UC Davis News and Media Relations,
530-750-9195,
kekerlin@ucdavis.edu
Thawing Permafrost May Be Driving Degradation
An aerial view of the rust-colored Kutuk River in Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska. Thawing permafrost is exposing minerals to weathering, increasing the acidity of the water, which releases metals like iron, zinc and copper. (Ken Hill / National Park Service)
Dozens of Alaska’s most remote streams and rivers are turning from a crystal clear blue into a cloudy orange, and the staining could be the result of minerals exposed by thawing permafrost, new research in the Nature journal Communications: Earth and Environment finds.
Fig. 1: Map of orange stream observations across the Brooks Range in northern Alaska.
Orange circles indicate orange stream observations, red stars indicate sites where water samples were collected (Fig. 2*) 20*, and blue circles are nearby villages. Hydrologic Unit Code-6 (HUC) basins are shown as black outlines from the National Watershed Boundary dataset 67*. The hill-shade layer utilizes the USGS National Elevation Dataset 68*. Map generated in Esri ArcMap software. Map credit: Kenneth Hill, NPS.
*Science paper reference.
See the science paper for further instructive material with images.
For the first time, a team of researchers from the National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey, the University of California, Davis, and other institutions have documented and sampled some of the impaired waters, pinpointing 75 locations across a Texas-sized area of northern Alaska’s Brooks Range.
These degraded rivers and streams could have significant implications for drinking water and fisheries in Arctic watersheds as the climate changes, the researchers said.
“The more we flew around, we started noticing more and more orange rivers and streams,” said lead author Jon O’Donnell, an ecologist for the NPS’ Arctic Inventory and Monitoring Network. “There are certain sites that look almost like a milky orange juice.
Those orange streams can be problematic both in terms of being toxic but might also prevent migration of fish to spawning areas.”
An aerial view of the Kutuk River in Alaska’s Gates of the Arctic National Park that looks like orange paint spilling into the clear blue water. (Ken Hill / National Park Service)
Visible from space
O’Donnell first noticed an issue when he visited a river in 2018 that appeared rusty despite having been clear the year prior. He began asking around and compiling locations while grabbing water samples when possible in the remote region, where helicopters are generally the only way to access the rivers and streams.
“The stained rivers are so big we can see them from space,” said Brett Poulin, an assistant professor of environmental toxicology at UC Davis who was a principal investigator in the research. “These have to be stained a lot to pick them up from space.”
Poulin, whose expertise is in water chemistry, thought the staining looked similar to what happens with acid mine drainage, except no mines are near any of the impaired rivers, including along the famed Salmon River and other federally protected waters.
One hypothesis is that the permafrost, which is essentially frozen ground, stores minerals and as the climate warmed, the metal ores that were once locked up were exposed to water and oxygen, resulting in the release of acid and metals.
“Chemistry tells us minerals are weathering,” Poulin said. “Understanding what’s in the water is a fingerprint as to what occurred.”
The impacted rivers are on federal lands managed by Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and NPS, including Gates of the Arctic and Kobuk Valley national parks.
Poulin and Ph.D. candidate Taylor Evinger analyzed initial samples, then collected their own on a trip last August, while others took samples in June and July. This year, they will take three trips during the summer to collect additional samples.
Alaska’s Rusting Rivers: The Alarming Impact of Permafrost Thaw on Arctic Rivers
Acidic water releasing metals
Some samples from the impaired waters have a pH of 2.3 compared to the average pH of 8 for these rivers. This means the sulfide minerals are weathering, resulting in highly acidic and corrosive conditions that release additional metals. Elevated or high levels of iron, zinc, nickel, copper and cadmium have been measured.
“We see a lot of different types of metals in these waters,” Evinger said. “One of the most dominant metals is iron. That’s what is causing the color change.”
While O’Donnell first noticed a change in 2018, satellite images have turned up stained waters dating back to 2008.
“The issue is slowly propagating from small headwaters into bigger rivers over time,” he said. “When emergent issues or threats come about, we need to be able to understand them.”
Understanding risk
The researchers are in the second year of a three-year grant aimed at understanding what is happening in the water, modeling what other areas may be at risk and assessing implications for drinking water and fishing stocks.
The problem is growing and affecting habitat, water quality and other ecological systems, turning healthy areas into degraded habitats with fewer fish and invertebrates. If rural communities rely on these rivers for drinking water, they could require treatment eventually, and the fishing stocks that feed local residents could be affected.
“There’s a lot of implications,” O’Donnell said. “As the climate continues to warm, we would expect permafrost to continue to thaw and so wherever there are these types of minerals, there’s potential for streams to be turning orange and becoming degraded in terms of water quality.”
More work is needed to better understand the problem and whether rivers and streams can rebound, perhaps after cold weather promotes permafrost recovery.
“I think there will be a lot more detailed work to follow up to address some of the uncertainties that we currently have,” O’Donnell said.
Scientists from Alaska Pacific University, Colorado State University, University of Alaska Anchorage and UC Riverside also contributed to the research.
The research was funded by U.S. Geological Survey–NPS Water Quality Partnership program, the U.S. Geological Survey Changing Arctic Ecosystem Initiative and the NPS Arctic Inventory and Monitoring Program.
See the full article here.
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The University of California-Davis is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of The University of California system. The institution was first founded as an agricultural branch of the system in 1905 and became the seventh campus of the University of California in 1959.
The university is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. The University of California-Davis faculty includes members of The National Academy of Sciences, members of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, members of the American Law Institute, members of the Institute of Medicine, and members of the National Academy of Engineering. Among other honours that university faculty, alumni, and researchers have won are Nobel Prizes, Presidential Medals of Freedom, Pulitzer Prizes, MacArthur Fellowships, and National Medals of Science.
Founded as a primarily agricultural campus, the university has expanded over the past century to include graduate and professional programs in medicine (which includes the University of California-Davis Medical Centre), law, veterinary medicine, education, nursing, and business management, in addition to 90 research programs offered by University of California-Davis Graduate Studies. The University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine is the largest veterinary school in the United States and has been ranked very high in the world. The University of California-Davis also offers certificates and courses, including online classes, for adults and non-traditional learners through its Division of Continuing and Professional Education.
The University of California-Davis Aggies athletic teams compete in NCAA Division I, primarily as members of the Big West Conference with additional sports in the Big Sky Conference (football only) and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.
Seventh UC campus
In 1959, the campus was designated by the Regents of The University of California as the seventh general campus in the University of California system.
University of California-Davis’s Graduate Division was established in 1961, followed by the creation of the College of Engineering in 1962. The law school opened for classes in fall 1966, and the School of Medicine began instruction in fall 1968. In a period of increasing activism, a Native American studies program was started in 1969, one of the first at a major university; it was later developed into a full department within the university.
Graduate Studies
The University of California-Davis Graduate Programs of Study consist of over 90 post-graduate programs, offering masters and doctoral degrees and post-doctoral courses. The programs educate over 4,000 students from around the world.
UC Davis has the following graduate and professional schools, the most in the entire University of California system:
UC Davis Graduate Studies
Graduate School of Management
School of Education
School of Law
School of Medicine
School of Veterinary Medicine
Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing
Research
The University of California-Davis is one of 71 members in The Association of American Universities, an organization of leading research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education.
Research centers and laboratories
The campus supports a number of research centers and laboratories including:
Advanced Highway Maintenance Construction Technology Research Laboratory
BGI at UC Davis Joint Genome Center (in planning process)
Bodega Marine Reserve
C-STEM Center
CalEPR Center
California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System
California International Law Center
California National Primate Research Center
California Raptor Center
Center for Health and the Environment
Center for Mind and Brain
Center for Poverty Research
Center for Regional Change
Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas
Center for Visual Sciences
Contained Research Facility
Crocker Nuclear Laboratory
Davis Millimeter Wave Research Center (A joint effort of Agilent Technologies Inc. and UC Davis) (in planning process)
Information Center for the Environment
John Muir Institute of the Environment (the largest research unit at UC Davis, spanning all Colleges and Professional Schools)
McLaughlin Natural Reserve
MIND Institute
Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Research Center
Quail Ridge Reserve
Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve
Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) (a collaborative effort with Sierra Nevada University)
UC Center Sacramento
UC Davis Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility
University of California Pavement Research Center
University of California Solar Energy Center (UC Solar)
Energy Efficiency Center (the very first university run energy efficiency center in the Nation).
Western Institute for Food Safety and Security
The Crocker Nuclear Laboratory on campus has had a nuclear accelerator since 1966. The laboratory is used by scientists and engineers from private industry, universities and government to research topics including nuclear physics, applied solid state physics, radiation effects, air quality, planetary geology and cosmogenics. University of California-Davis is the only University of California campus, besides The University of California-Berkeley, that has a nuclear laboratory.
Agilent Technologies also works with the university in establishing a Davis Millimeter Wave Research Center to conduct research into millimeter wave and THz systems.
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