Data_Sheet_1_Size Distributions of Arctic Waterbodies Reveal Consistent Relations in Their Statistical Moments in Space and Time.docx

• Main Authors: Sina Muster, William J. Riley, Kurt Roth, Moritz Langer, Fabio Cresto Aleina, Charles D. Koven, Stephan Lange, Annett Bartsch, Guido Grosse, Cathy J. Wilson, Benjamin M. Jones, Julia Boike
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Solid Earth Sciences; Climate Science; Atmospheric Sciences not elsewhere classified; Exploration Geochemistry; Inorganic Geochemistry; Isotope Geochemistry; Organic Geochemistry; Geochemistry not elsewhere classified; Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology; Ore Deposit Petrology; Palaeontology (incl. Palynology); Structural Geology; Tectonics; Volcanology; Geology not elsewhere classified; Seismology and Seismic Exploration; Glaciology; Hydrogeology; Natural Hazards; Quaternary Environments; Earth Sciences not elsewhere classified; Evolutionary Impacts of Climate Change; permafrost; hydrology; waterbodies; size distribution; thermokarst; statistical moments; ponds; lakes; Arctic; Climate change; Thermokarst
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2019.00005.s001; https://figshare.com/articles/Data_Sheet_1_Size_Distributions_of_Arctic_Waterbodies_Reveal_Consistent_Relations_in_Their_Statistical_Moments_in_Space_and_Time_docx/7640777

Arctic lowlands are characterized by large numbers of small waterbodies, which are known to affect surface energy budgets and the global carbon cycle. Statistical analysis of their size distributions has been hindered by the shortage of observations at sufficiently high spatial resolutions. This situation has now changed with the high-resolution (<5 m) circum-Arctic Permafrost Region Pond and Lake (PeRL) database recently becoming available. We have used this database to make the first consistent, high-resolution estimation of Arctic waterbody size distributions, with surface areas ranging from 0.0001 km 2 (100 m 2 ) to 1 km 2 . We found that the size distributions varied greatly across the thirty study regions investigated and that there was no single universal size distribution function (including power-law distribution functions) appropriate across all of the study regions. We did, however, find close relationships between the statistical moments (mean, variance, and skewness) of the waterbody size distributions from different study regions. Specifically, we found that the spatial variance increased linearly with mean waterbody size (R 2 = 0.97, p < 2.2e-16) and that the skewness decreased approximately hyperbolically. We have demonstrated that these relationships (1) hold across the 30 Arctic study regions covering a variety of (bio)climatic and permafrost zones, (2) hold over time in two of these study regions for which multi-decadal satellite imagery is available, and (3) can be reproduced by simulating rising water levels in a high-resolution digital elevation model. The consistent spatial and temporal relationships between the statistical moments of the waterbody size distributions underscore the dominance of topographic controls in lowland permafrost areas. These results provide motivation for further analyses of the factors involved in waterbody development and spatial distribution and for investigations into the possibility of using statistical moments to predict future hydrologic dynamics in ...