This season was interesting for High Arctic hydrology.
Total snowfall, and snow water equivalence estimates, was amongst the highest
at Cape Bounty since monitoring began in 2003. This year also saw a significant
delay in the initiation of snowmelt and channel flow, with the start of
discharge not beginning until June 22 - the second latest day of first flow in
our records. This change to the hydrology creates more questions about how this
year will fit into our longer term record and what increased snowfall means for
suspended sediment transfer.
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| Camping out at the West River station during a long sampling campaign. |
The main objective of my research this year was to gain a
better understanding of the temporal patterns of suspended sediment transfer.
To do this, I spent 15 hours camped out in my waders, with a deck chair for
comfort, and over 200 sample bottles, collecting water every 10 minutes from
the West River. Thankfully, I choose a perfect day for this saga - with blue
skies and warm temperatures. Across the river, two Greater Snow Geese have
chosen a small grassy knoll to nest, and for the majority of my day, they were
my only company, and as the hours drew on, I began to realize that they weren’t
great conversationalists.
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| West River at full runoff. |
One of the exciting additions to my research is that it is
spatially distributed across multiple catchments. This allows me the
opportunity to explore the landscape and find exciting new landscape features,
fossils, and even marine shells that are emerging from degrading slopes. So far
this year, we have discovered a newly forming landscape disturbance in the
lower East River catchment, revisited the expanding retrogressive thaw slump to
the north of camp, and collected enough rocks for my collection to warrant an
extra bag of luggage for the trip home.
