An Integrated Understanding of the Hydrological Controls of Mountain Lakes PDF Download

Author: Jason Mercer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Climatic changes
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Lakes are important feature in mountain watersheds, storing water during the wetter months and releasing that water during the drier parts of the year thereby sustaining hydrological flows to lowland areas when water is most needed. However, the hydrological pathways and conditional controls of those pathways are still unclear. To better understand the hydrology of mountain lakes, I studied several (n = 14) of these ecosystems over a three-year period, 2015-2017 in the Snowy Range of the Rocky Mountains, southeast Wyoming. I focused on understanding the conditional controls of atmospheric and groundwater exchanges using a combination of hydrological tracers and measurements within a Bayesian modeling framework. Results indicate that stable water isotopes, a key hydrological tracer, are likely recording more environmental process information than previously thought, which could allow both improved process representation and a better understanding of current and past climate conditions. Groundwater exchange (both gains and losses) was found to be important, but surface processes dominated the hydrologic balance for most of the studied lakes. Given that groundwater transit times tend to be relatively longer, this suggests mountain lakes will express a continuum of responses to environmental shifts in the future, such as those associated with climate change. Precise responses, however, will likely depend on specific climate trajectories and the geometry of local groundwater systems.