Dr
Lee Brown
Modelling Arctic Alpine glacier runoff and floodplain dynamics
(with Dr. John Carrivick and Dr Katherine Arrell)
The aim of this project is to link models of glacial meltwater
discharge, sediment mobility and floodplain inundation dynamics in an
arctic alpine system, namely that at Kårsavagge, near Abisko (68 degrees
north), arctic Sweden.
This will be achieved through two objectives: (a) model melt on Kårsaglaciären, and (b) model discharge and sediment mobility of the Kårsavagge floodplain. Briefly, this will involve the following field measurements; (i) a topographic survey of Kårsaglaciären surface topography (dGPS) and snow-ice interface (snow probing), (ii) collation of existing mass balance (via Tarfala/Stockholm) and climate records (via Abisko), (iii) Kårsavagge weather parameters (for energy balance modelling validation), (iv) Kårsajåkka channel (bed substrate) and hydrology (discharge, sediment concentration). These field measurements will inform and subsequently validate a distributed energy balance model and a river evolution/stability model.
It is envisaged that through integration of the two models this project will ultimately provide the basis for understanding the hydrological implications of regional climate change by quantifying floodplain response to winter snow melt events and spring snowpack retreat. This will be achieved by modelling the effects of air temperature and precipitation on glacial runoff and river discharge (from glacial and groundwater sources), and the effects of these changing regimes on floodplain hydrology.
This project is funded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' Transnational Access Programme (ATANS).
Hydroecological response of Svalbard river systems to climate change: Integrated comparison of responses across a number of high latitude basins.
The principal aim of this highly interdisciplinary project is to link changes in water source contributions to physico-chemical habitat and, in turn, stream biodiversity and, thus, develop tools to assess the vulnerability of Arctic river ecosystems to climate change.
Sub-goals include
(1) to investigate community structure of streams of varying water source contributions in Svalbard,
(2) to elucidate the principal environmental variables driving stream community structure, with particular reference to contributions from water source,
(3) to compare community structure with the findings of our studies from other Arctic (e.g. Alaska, Sweden, Greenland) and alpine (Austria, France) river systems, thus placing the results in a global context,
(4) to use the information gained by 1-3 to refine existing alpine hydroecological conceptual modes for the Arctic, with the aim of predicting stream ecosystem response to environmental change; and identify macroinvertebrate taxa that can be utilised as indicators of Arctic hydrological and climatological change (cf. Brown et al., 2007; Global Change Biology 13, 958–966).
The research is a collaboration with the University of Birmingham (Prof. A. Milner, Dr . D. Hannah, Mr. P. Blaen) and is part funded by the European Centre for Arctic Environmental Research (ARCFAC-V)