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ABSTRACT
Rapid warming of the Antarctic Peninsula is producing accelerated glacier mass loss and can be expected to have significant impacts on meltwater runoff regimes and proglacial fluvial activity. This study presents analysis of the hydrology and suspended sediment dynamics of two proglacial streams on James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula. Mean water discharge during 8 January 2015 to 18 February 2015 reached 0.19 m3 s−1 and 0.06 m3 s−1 for Bohemian Stream and Algal Stream, respectively, equivalent to specific runoff of 76 and 60 mm month−1. The daily discharge regime strongly correlated with air and ground temperatures. The effect of global radiation on proglacial water discharge was found low to negligible. Suspended sediment concentrations of Bohemian Stream were very high (up to 2927 mg L−1) due to aeolian supply and due to the high erodibility of local rocks. Total sediment yield (186 t km−2 yr−1) was high for (nearly) deglaciated catchments, but relatively low in comparison with streams draining more glaciated alpine and arctic catchments. The sediment provenance was mostly local Cretaceous marine and aeolian sediments; volcanic rocks are not an important source for suspended load. High Rb/Sr ratios for some samples suggested chemical weathering. Overall, this monitoring of proglacial hydrological and suspended sediment dynamics contributes to the dearth of such data from Antarctic environments and offers an insight to the nature of the proglacial fluvial activity, which is likely to be in a transient state with ongoing climate change.
Acknowledgements
We thank the Johann Gregor Mendel Station infrastructure for logistical support and the members of the summer expedition 2015 for their company and field assistance on JRI. Authors also wish to thank Jakub Małecki and one anonymous reviewer for much appreciated comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Jan Kavan is a PhD student at Department of Geography in Masaryk University, Brno. He also works at University of South Bohemia. His main research interests are hydrology and fluvial morphology in both polar regions.
Jakub Ondruch is a PhD student and field assistant at Polar-Geo-Lab at Department of Geography, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. Current projects focus on hydrological, chemical, and geomorphic behaviour of proglacial streams in Antarctic Peninsula and High Arctic regions.
Daniel Nývlt is an Associate Professor of Physical Geography at the Department of Geography, Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia, where he is the head of the Polar-Geo-Lab. He is involved in a wide range of geoscientific research topics in Antarctica and the Arctic focusing mostly on past and present changes of polar geosystems.
Filip Hrbáček is a PhD student and field assistant at Polar-Geo-Lab at Department of Geography, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. His main area of research is periglacial geomorphology with special focus on interactions between climate and active layer of permafrost.
Jonathan L. Carrivick is a Senior Lecturer in Geomorphology. His research interests focus on earth surface processes and landforms in polar, arctic and alpine environments. He especially focuses on the processes and products of glacial outburst floods or ‘jökulhlaups'.
Kamil Láska is an Associate Professor of Physical Geography at the Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia. His main research interests include polar meteorology and climatology, studies on solar UV radiation, surface energy fluxes and atmospheric boundary layer processes in Antarctica and the Arctic. He is undertaking a project on glacier response to recent climate variability in the Northeastern part of Antarctic Peninsula.