A geospatial approach to identifying and mapping areas of relative environmental pressure on ecosystem integrity.

The influence of increasing anthropogenic pressure on ecosystem integrity, such as land use change, is resulting in many ecosystems experiencing a decline in their ability to maintain balanced functions and services. Identifying and quantifying these pressures over different scales is challenging and thus impacting the achievement or maintenance of key environmental outcomes. In this study, a GIS-based and scalable tool was developed, the Relative Environmental Pressure (REP) Tool, to address these challenges.

Linking catchment structural units (CSUs) with water quality: Implications for ambient monitoring network design and data interpretation.

Climate induced changes in runoff regimes and ongoing anthropogenic modification of land use and land cover (LULC) are shifting ambient water quality signals worldwide. Modulation of these signals by the physical catchment structure over different scales adds complexity to interpreting and analyzing measured data. Further bias may be introduced where monitoring networks are not representative of the structure of catchments in a given region.

Emerging dominance of summer rainfall driving High Arctic terrestrial-aquatic connectivity.

Hydrological transformations induced by climate warming are causing Arctic annual fluvial energy to shift from skewed (snowmelt-dominated) to multimodal (snowmelt- and rainfall-dominated) distributions. We integrated decade-long hydrometeorological and biogeochemical data from the High Arctic to show that shifts in the timing and magnitude of annual discharge patterns and stream power budgets are causing Arctic material transfer regimes to undergo fundamental changes. Increased late summer rainfall enhanced terrestrial-aquatic connectivity for dissolved and particulate material fluxes.

Severe western Canadian wildfire affects water quality even at large basin scales.

Wildfires can have severe and lasting impacts on the water quality of aquatic ecosystems. However, our understanding of these impacts is founded primarily from studies of small watersheds with well-connected runoff regimes. Despite the predominance of large, low-relief rivers across the fire-prone Boreal forest, it is unclear to what extent and duration wildfire-related material (e.

Differential impact of thermal and physical permafrost disturbances on High Arctic dissolved and particulate fluvial fluxes.

Climate warming and changing precipitation patterns have thermally (active layer deepening) and physically (permafrost-thaw related mass movements) disturbed permafrost-underlain watersheds across much of the Arctic, increasing the transfer of dissolved and particulate material from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems. We examined the multiyear (2006-2017) impact of thermal and physical permafrost disturbances on all of the major components of fluvial flux. Thermal disturbances increased the flux of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), but localized physical disturbances decreased multiyear DOC flux.