Freshwater Systems

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Freshwater systems are a major feature of the arctic landscape because permafrost prevents drainage, and evaporation is low. They must be studied and understood in their pristine condition as a major part of the Arctic interacting system. The broad goal of the project is to understand and predict how the tundra, lakes and streams function and how they respond to change. A specific goal is to understand the extent of control by resources (bottom- up control) or by grazing and predation (top-down control) and to understand the exchange of nutrients between land and water. The heart of the project is the long-term experimental manipulations of ecosystems to examine processes and the effects of change. A part of the project is to monitor year-to-year variability and to measure long-term changes. The data collected in plots on the tundra and in small areas of the stream and lakes will be scaled up to the whole watershed level through mathematical modeling. In the future, the watershed model will be interactive with other data bases so the model and process information may be extrapolated to the larger region. A prediction may then be made for such questions as the future export of nutrients from the whole of the north slope of Alaska when temperature and precipitation changes.