CAREER: Integrating field geomorphology, remote sensing, undergraduate education, and modelling to improve understanding of Arctic hydrology

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

The Arctic is undergoing rapid changes as this sensitive region responds to altered energy and water transport at the global scale, deeply affecting its local communities, ecosystems, and water cycle. One of the best ways to catalog and understand these changes is through the study of Arctic rivers. Rivers are an excellent indicator of overall Arctic change as the water in the river at any given time (its "discharge") is a reflection of all of the other components of the water and energy cycles: precipitation, evaporation, and groundwater movements. However, logistical difficulties and shifting international priorities have resulted in a steep decline in gauge monitoring network. Likewise, the unique geomorphology (the way rivers shape and are shaped by the landscape) of Arctic rivers is relatively understudied. Without advances in open source data and understanding of Arctic rivers we lack the ability to assess recent Artic changes that are affecting citizens and ecosystems alike, and our ability to accurately predict the future climate and water resources of the Arctic is greatly impaired. Therefore, this project seeks an unprecedented accounting of the pan-Arctic hydrologic cycle built from the river up. The project will first develop the basic open-source river data needed to assess recent changes in Arctic hydrology and then use these data to catalog and understand the state of the Arctic's water. Specifically, the project will couple the recent explosion in big-data remote sensing and specific remote sensing discharge estimation techniques with classic fluvial geomorphology to estimate discharge for every Arctic river wider than 150m from 1984 to present using NASA's Landsat family of satellites. This remotely sensed Arctic river assessment will be founded upon a backbone of detailed fieldwork as designed and executed by undergraduates at UMass Amherst in a new program: Integrating Geosciences and Engineering in the Arctic (IGEA). IGEA participants will design and lead fieldwork intended to deepen understanding of unique Arctic geomorphology, and this information will be absorbed to improve the discharge estimates made from remote sensing. IGEA students will design field experiments in the spring semester as juniors, perform Arctic fieldwork in the summer after their junior year, and then analyze their data and train the next cohort of participants in the fall of their senior year. Undergraduates are purposefully drawn from two different disciplines, Engineering and Geosciences, to address disciplinary siloing at the undergraduate level and to train, teach, and inspire the next generation of interdisciplinary thinkers through this immersive Arctic research program. Finally, the IGEA-informed remotely sensed discharge data will be used to calibrate an open source global hydrology model, integrating the other components of this project to reach a fuller understanding of the entire Arctic system achieved through improved process-based understanding of Arctic rivers.