Understanding the Effects of Climate Change in the Yukon River Basin through a Synergistic Research Approach

• Main Authors: Michelle Walvoord, Paul Schuster, Rob Striegl
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Yukon; Canada; glacier; glacier*; Ice; permafrost; Thermokarst; Yukon river; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.387.3194; http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2009/5049/pdf/Walvoord.pdf

Climatic warming in northern latitudes is resulting in a longer growing season, permafrost warming, thermokarst formation, enhanced glacier melting, and earlier ice breakup of lakes and rivers. The Yukon River Basin located in northwestern Canada and central Alaska has extensive permafrost of varying distribution and thickness that is degrading. The basin drains 854,700 km 2 and supports a population of approximately 126,000 people, 10 percent of which rely heavily on the basin’s fish and game resources for their subsistence or livelihood (Brabets et al. 2000). The 3,300-km-long Yukon River and its major tributaries also supply drinking water for towns and villages in the interior of Alaska and provide routes for travel by local residents and for migration by spawning salmon. Therefore, streamflow timing is important from both water resource management and ecologic sustainability perspectives. Recent findings indicate a shift in streamflow behavior toward increased flow during the winter months when the large streams are fed by groundwater, an earlier spring peak, and decreased flow during summer months when streams are fed predominately by surface water runoff. These shifts in streamflow timing may be attributed, in large part, to permafrost thawing and a deepened groundwater flow system. A trend analysis shows the proportion of groundwater to total annual discharge from the Yukon River Basin increasing by 0.9 percent per year over the past several decades (Walvoord and Striegl 2007). Groundwater is depleted in