Funds are provided to establish the links between weather patterns, lake thermal structure, and mixing dynamics in arctic lakes. Furthermore, the principal investigator will establish linkages between these abiotic processes and biogeochemical processes, thus establishing a framework that will allow results from biogeochemical process studies conducted over one or two years to be placed into temporal perspective. The analysis will be done for lakes of differing sizes in the Alaskan Arctic with the expectation that the framework which develops will be of use in interpreting studies across the broader arctic region.
The research objectives are (1) to quantify how residence time in the upper mixed layer (UML) and rates of transport to the UML from the benthic boundary layer vary with changes in weather, (2) to link changes in weather to larger scale climate forcing, and (3) to assess the role of lake dynamics in the fate of mercury and persistent organic pollutants and benthic and pelagic primary production.
