LINCOLN, Neb. -- John Lenters, hydroclimatologist and associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's School of Natural Resources, spends several weeks each summer in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States.
"It's not exactly vacation paradise but it's an interesting place to be," is how Lenters describes Barrow, the home base for his ongoing work on lake evaporation in the Arctic. His research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is featured in the March issue of Smithsonian Magazine.
Certain occupational hazards come along with doing field research in northern Alaska. Arctic foxes chew on wires; polar bears crush equipment. On the day when correspondent Bob Reiss from Smithsonian tagged along, Lenters put him on bear duty. Reiss helped drive the research boat and also stood guard with a shotgun as Lenters fixed the wiring on an instrumented weather buoy.
"On the arctic tundra, you have this feeling like you're at a zoo, but this time you're inside the fence," said Lenters.
Lenters' arctic research focuses on thaw lakes – large elliptical pools of fresh water formed in depressions in the permafrost. Out on the open tundra near Barrow and the surrounding Arctic Coastal Plain are thousands of thaw lakes, as well as numerous former lake basins that have now drained away. For the last two years, Lenters and his graduate students have maintained floating weather stations and underwater thermometers on a number of the lakes, each year setting up new stations further inland. Their work monitors the energy balance of the lakes and calculates the rate of evaporation.
"The reason we're ultimately interested in evaporation is that it is one of the biggest losses of water from the land surface hydrologic system, of which lakes are an important part" said Lenters. "The whole issue of water availability is very closely tied to the question of how much evaporation occurs, how and why it varies, and how it might change with climate change."
Lenters is working with Ken Hinkel and Richard Beck, physical geographers from the University of Cincinnati who specialize in periglacial geomorphology, climatology, and Geographic Information System (GIS) science. Additional collaborators include Yongwei Sheng and Larry Smith, remote sensing specialists from UCLA who are using satellite data and ground truthing to map changes in lake shorelines and areal extent. The U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage is also part of the interdisciplinary team. Colleagues Wendy Eisner from the University of Cincinnati and Chris Cuomo from the University of Georgia are working on an integrated GIS database for compiling and incorporating the observations of indigenous Alaskans. Eric Maurer, also of the University of Cincinnati, is monitoring the water quality of thaw lakes along the Arctic Coastal Plain. Numerous graduate students are involved in the project, including two from UNL's School of Natural Resources – Nathan Healey and Brittany Potter.
John Lenters |
The vast tundra's freshwater habitat is home to thousands of migrating waterfowl, caribou, and other wildlife that depend on the lakes and wetlands for water, food, and nesting grounds. Communities that rely on subsistence hunting and fishing are also dependent on the lakes. Oil companies use the water to make ice roads on the tundra that serve as primary transportation routes for industry in the wintertime.
"The dynamics of these lakes are of significant relevance to the people of northern Alaska, but the research also has broader relevance because we're looking at a process – the evaporation process," said Lenters. In his graduate level course, "Advanced Topics in Physical Limnology," Lenters incorporates examples from his research group's fieldwork in Alaska, as well as his work on lakes in the Nebraska Sandhills, northern Wisconsin, and Lake Superior.
"From the largest lake in the world to the saline lakes in western Nebraska to polar lakes up in the Arctic, we're trying to get a holistic perspective on how evaporation responds to climate." This, says Lenters, will contribute significantly to our understanding of the impacts of climate on water resources.
In June, Lenters will fly to Barrow and other sites to maintain and replace equipment, retrieve data, and deploy new monitoring stations on lakes further inland. He will be accompanied by Potter, who recently won a travel fellowship to give a seminar on her research, participate in fieldwork, and engage in outreach with the local residents and schoolchildren in Barrow. Another trip to retrieve data and instruments is planned for August.
Lenters and his colleagues will continue to process and analyze the vast amount of information that is being collected as part of this project. They have also submitted a new grant proposal to NSF to establish a long-term observation network that will continue to monitor the changing properties of the Arctic's inland lakes well into the future.
Source: John Lenters, hydroclimatologist, associate professor, School of Natural Resources, jlenters@unl.edu, (402) 304-0166
Writer: Kat Shiffler, communications associate, School of Natural Resources, kshiffler2@unl.edu, (402) 472-6781
