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Petter Pilesjö

Petter Pilesjö

Professor

Petter Pilesjö

Dissolved organic carbon in streams within a subarctic catchment analysed using a GIS/remote sensing approach

Author

  • Pearl MZOBE
  • Martin Berggren
  • Petter Pilesjö
  • Erik Lundin
  • David Olefeldt
  • Nigel T. Roulet
  • Andreas Persson

Summary, in English

Climate change projections show that temperature and precipitation increases can alter the exchange of greenhouse gases between the atmosphere and high latitude landscapes, including their freshwaters. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) plays an important role in greenhouse gas emissions, but the impact of catchment productivity on DOC release to subarctic waters remains poorly known, especially at regional scales. We test the hypothesis that increased terrestrial productivity, as indicated by the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), generates higher stream DOC concentrations in the Stordalen catchment in subarctic Sweden. Furthermore, we aimed to determine the degree to which other generic catchment properties (elevation, slope) explain DOC concentration, and whether or not land cover variables representing the local vegetation type (e.g., mire, forest) need to be included to obtain adequate predictive models for DOC delivered into rivers. We show that the land cover type, especially the proportion of mire, played a dominant role in the catchment’s release of DOC, while NDVI, slope, and elevation were supporting predictor variables. The NDVI as a single predictor showed weak and inconsistent relationships to DOC concentrations in recipient waters, yet NDVI was a significant positive regulator of DOC in multiple regression models that included land cover variables. Our study illustrates that vegetation type exerts primary control in DOC regulation in Stordalen, while productivity (NDVI) is of secondary importance. Thus, predictive multiple linear regression models for DOC can be utilized combining these different types of explanatory variables.

Department/s

  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World
  • Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
  • Centre for Geographical Information Systems (GIS Centre)
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2018-07-06

Language

English

Publication/Series

PLoS ONE

Volume

13

Issue

7

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Public Library of Science (PLoS)

Topic

  • Earth and Related Environmental Sciences

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1932-6203