Intellectual Merits. Glaciers in Alaska and elsewhere are melting, and glacier meltwater likely induces profound changes in hydrology and the functions of peatland ecosystems. However, we don?t know the magnitude and mechanisms of meltwater impacts at a regional scale nor potential feedbacks from the resulting changes in peatland carbon and water storage. This proposal intends to evaluate the hypothesis that climate-induced glacier melting has accelerated the lateral expansion and vertical growth of peatlands in the Susitna Valley of south-central Alaska.
This interdisciplinary project will document temporal and spatial changes in peatlands at a regional scale over the last 1000 years using field monitoring (interannual resolution), remote sensing (decadal resolution) and paleoecological (decadal to centennial resolution) techniques in paired glacierized and non-glacierized watersheds of the Susitna Basin. We will use modern ecological and hydrological monitoring and geochemical tracers to understand the connection between peatland dynamics and ongoing changes in climate and hydrology. We will reconstruct peatland moisture and C accumulation history to evaluate peatland responses to the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period (past glacier advance and retreat events).
Broader Impacts. This project will bring together 4 junior researchers from diverse fields of ecology and paleoecology, hydroclimatology and low-temperature geochemistry, and remote sensing and ice/snow science to study both long-term ecosystem development and contemporary ecological and hydrologic dynamics. The project will initiate collaboration and interactions among them to bring fresh ideas and multidisciplinary tools together to conduct global change science in high latitudes and high altitudes. The project will include interdisciplinary training of graduate students and research experience for undergraduate students at Lehigh and Ohio State Universities.
An educational specialist at the Byrd Polar Research Center at OSU will use the results from this project to develop an innovative outreach program to improve the delivery of climate change information to middle and high school teachers. Also, the project will contribute materials to a new Polar Frontier exhibit (featuring Frontier Alaska) in the Columbus Zoo.
The results from this study will provide valuable insights into understanding the connections of climate change, glacier dynamics, hydrology, and ecosystems in a changing world. The project will contribute to disciplinary areas in hydrologic sciences, ecosystem studies, and geobiology and low-temperature geochemistry. Furthermore, the project has merited the support by ETBC (Emerging Topics in Biogeochemical Cycles) because it exemplifies interdisciplinary research focused on the tandem investigation of climate-water-carbon dynamics and physical-chemical-biological processes over a range of temporal and spatial scales.
