Award Abstract # 2322664
LTER: Seasonal Controls and Emergent Effects of Changing Land-ice-ocean Interactions on Arctic Coastal Ecosystems (BLE II)

NSF Org: OPP
Office of Polar Programs (OPP)
Recipient: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
Initial Amendment Date: August 10, 2023
Latest Amendment Date: September 3, 2024
Award Number: 2322664
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Roberto Delgado
robdelga@nsf.gov
 (703)292-2397
OPP
 Office of Polar Programs (OPP)
GEO
 Directorate for Geosciences
Start Date: September 1, 2023
End Date: August 31, 2028 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $6,375,000.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $2,663,564.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2023 = $1,275,000.00
FY 2024 = $1,388,564.00
History of Investigator:
  • Kenneth Dunton (Principal Investigator)
    ken.dunton@mail.utexas.edu
  • Timothy Whiteaker (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Bailey McMeans (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Texas at Austin
110 INNER CAMPUS DR
AUSTIN
TX  US  78712-1139
(512)471-6424
Sponsor Congressional District: 25
Primary Place of Performance: University of Texas at Austin
110 INNER CAMPUS DR
AUSTIN
TX  US  78712-1139
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
25
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): V6AFQPN18437
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Primary Program Source: 0100CYXXDB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 1079, 1195, 5294
Program Element Code(s): 119500
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.078

ABSTRACT

This project continues the Beaufort Lagoon Ecosystems Long Term Ecological Research (BLE LTER) program. The BLE LTER was added to NSF?s network of LTER sites in 2017 and current work represents the second phase of this long-term effort. The project focuses on interactions between physical, chemical, and biological properties of nearshore ecosystems along Alaska?s northern-most coastline. The study addresses fundamental questions about what controls and sustains food webs in Arctic coastal waters and how climate change is altering these food webs. The project also examines the effects of climate change on greenhouse gas emissions near the Arctic land-sea interface. Estuaries along the Beaufort Sea coast support productive and biologically complex assemblages of biota that are important to the Indigenous residents of the Alaskan Arctic. These assemblages are inherently shaped by extreme seasonal variations in physical and chemical conditions yet are increasingly challenged by shifts in seasonality as well as other climate change impacts in the rapidly warming Arctic. Studies based out of Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Deadhorse, and Kaktovik, Alaska, are addressing how changes in shoreline erosion, freshwater inflows, ice cover, and ocean circulation over seasonal, annual, and longer timeframes influence near-shore food webs, from bacteria to top predators. This includes consideration of resident and anadromous fishes and migratory birds that serve important cultural and subsistence roles in the lives of Alaska Natives that live along the Alaskan Beaufort Sea coast. While the project?s work on food webs includes components that are of particular interest to local communities, components focusing on greenhouse gas emissions have broader societal relevance. Inputs of organic carbon from land to sea are increasing as permafrost (perennially frozen ground) thaws in the warming Arctic, and this project is studying how decomposition and associated release of greenhouse gasses from these inputs may contribute to global warming. Research activities are conducted in collaboration with local and broader stakeholder groups. This project is also strongly committed to education, including graduate and undergraduate student training, post-doctoral mentoring, continuation of popular schoolyard activities in Kaktovik, and establishment of new K-12 and community college (I?isa?vik) programs in Utqiagvik.

Ecological studies suggest that temporal forcing is critical to our understanding of what controls food web structure. More specifically, there is mounting evidence that the differential availability of seasonally-distinct resources is particularly important for defining trophic linkages and maintaining stability and resilience of food webs. The BLE LTER is using lagoons along the Alaskan Beaufort Sea coast as experimental units to explore this concept. Arctic lagoons serve as excellent test beds because they experience extreme variability in seasonal cycles, which are now subject to rapid directional shifts driven by climate change. Our overarching question is: How do variations in terrestrial inputs, local production, and exchange between lagoon and ocean waters over seasonal, inter-annual, inter-decadal, and longer timeframes interact to control food web structure through effects on carbon and nitrogen cycling, microbial and metazoan community composition, and trophic linkages? Arctic lagoons provide a unique opportunity to study these interactions in the absence of fringing wetlands that often modulate land-ocean interactions in other lagoon systems. In addition, barrier island geomorphology, which exerts a strong control on water exchange between lagoons and the open ocean, is highly dynamic in the Arctic because sea-ice effects are superimposed on the effects of currents, sea level, and waves. Thus, connections between inputs from land and lagoon ecosystems are more direct, and water exchanges between lagoons and the open ocean are more variable than is typical of lower latitude systems. The project?s study sites are in Elson Lagoon (western Beaufort), Simpson Lagoon and Stefansson Sound (central Beaufort), and Kaktovik and Jago lagoons (eastern Beaufort). The BLE LTER team conducts seasonal field work during ice covered, ice break-up, and open water periods and deploys sensors for continuous long-term measurements of key biogeochemical and hydrographic parameters. The project also includes watershed and lagoon ecosystem modeling components. While working to advance understanding of fundamental ecological principles, this project provides a much-needed mechanism for tracking and understanding 1) how natural climate cycles influence coastal ecosystems in the Arctic, and 2) how climate change effects such as permafrost thaw, shifting precipitation regimes, and losses of sea ice alter coastal ecosystems.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Bristol, Emily M and Behnke, Megan I and Spencer, Robert_G M and McKenna, Amy and Jones, Benjamin M and Bull, Diana L and McClelland, James W "Eroding Permafrost Coastlines Release Biodegradable Dissolved Organic Carbon to the Arctic Ocean" Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences , v.129 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JG008233 Citation Details
Bullock, Emma J and Schaal, Isabel V and Cardenas, M Bayani and McClelland, James W and Henderson, Paul B and Charette, Matthew A "Seasonality of submarine groundwater discharge to an Arctic coastal lagoon" Limnology and Oceanography , v.69 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.12585 Citation Details
Crump, Byron C and Bowen, Jennifer L "The Microbial Ecology of Estuarine Ecosystems" Annual Review of Marine Science , v.16 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-022123-101845 Citation Details
Donahue, Kellen and Kimball, John S and Du, Jinyang and Bunt, Fredrick and Colliander, Andreas and Moghaddam, Mahta and Johnson, Jesse and Kim, Youngwook and Rawlins, Michael A "Deep learning estimation of northern hemisphere soil freeze-thaw dynamics using satellite multi-frequency microwave brightness temperature observations" Frontiers in Big Data , v.6 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2023.1243559 Citation Details
Guimond, Julia A. and Demir, Cansu and Kurylyk, Barret L. and Walvoord, Michelle A. and McClelland, James W. and Cardenas, M. Bayani "Wind-modulated groundwater discharge along a microtidal Arctic coastline" Environmental Research Letters , v.18 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acf0d8 Citation Details
Laske, Sarah M and von_Biela, Vanessa R and Stanek, Ashley E and Dunton, Kenneth H "Local environmental conditions structured discrete fish assemblages in Arctic lagoons" Polar Biology , v.47 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-024-03239-8 Citation Details
Rawlins, Michael A. and Karmalkar, Ambarish V. "Regime shifts in Arctic terrestrial hydrology manifested from impacts of climate warming" The Cryosphere , v.18 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-1033-2024 Citation Details

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