The pan-Arctic catchment database (ARCADE)

• Published in: Earth System Science Data
• Main Authors: Speetjens, Niek Jesse, Hugelius, Gustaf, Gumbricht, Thomas, Lantuit, Hugues, Berghuijs, Wouter R, Pika, Philip A, Poste, Amanda, Vonk, Jorien E
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2023
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Ice; permafrost; wedge*
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/58257/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/58257/1/essd-15-541-2023.pdf; https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-541-2023; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.e0a82839-d005-468e-a7be-5eae755fa6f3

The Arctic is rapidly changing. Outside the Arctic, large-sample catchment databases have transformed catchment science from focusing on local case studies to more systematic studies of watershed functioning. Here we present an integrated pan-ARctic CAtchments summary DatabasE (ARCADE) of > 40 000 catchments that drain into the Arctic Ocean and range in size from 1 to 3.1 × 106 km2. These watersheds, delineated at a 90 m resolution, are provided with 103 geospatial, environmental, climatic, and physiographic catchment properties. ARCADE is the first aggregated database of pan-Arctic river catchments that also includes numerous small watersheds at a high resolution. These small catchments are experiencing the greatest climatic warming while also storing large quantities of soil carbon in landscapes that are especially prone to degradation of permafrost (i.e., ice wedge polygon terrain) and associated hydrological regime shifts. ARCADE is a key step toward monitoring the pan-Arctic across scales and is publicly available: https://doi.org/10.34894/U9HSPV (Speetjens et al., 2022).