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Research article2014Peer reviewed

Adjacent catchments with similar patterns of land use and climate have markedly different dissolved organic carbon concentration and runoff dynamics

Oni, Stephen; Futter, Martyn; Molot, Lewis A.; Dillon, Peter J.

Abstract

Temporal patterns in specific runoff, dissolved organic carbon concentrations [DOC] and fluxes were examined during two periods: 1994-1997 (period 1) and 2007-2009 (period 2) in five adjacent tributary catchments of Lake Simcoe, the largest lake in southern Ontario, Canada. The catchments displayed similar patterns of land use change with increases in urbanization (5-16%) and forest cover (0.2-4%) and declines in agriculture (4-8%) between 1994 and 2008. Climate in the catchments was similar; temperature increased slightly, but no significant change in precipitation was observed. Despite similar pattern of climate and land use, runoff responses and tributary [DOC] were different across the catchments. Following a very dry year (i.e. 1999), runoff increased steadily until the end of record. We observed increased variability in tributary [DOC] and higher DOC exports in period 2. This led to similar to 10% increase in [DOC] and a 13% increase in flux between the two study periods. Between the two periods, [DOC] increased by 15% in spring and 25% in summer, whereas flux increased by 17% in spring and 48% in summer. [DOC] was consistently higher in the growing (summer+autumn) than the dormant (winter+spring, minus spring melt months) seasons, but no unique pattern or simple linear flow/concentrations relationships existed. This suggests complex spatial and temporal pattern to runoff controls on DOC and flow dynamics in adjacent catchments. We therefore caution against extrapolating from monitored to unmonitored catchments. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords

Lake Simcoe; land use change; dissolved organic carbon; remote sensing; runoff change; variability

Published in

Hydrological Processes
2014, Volume: 28, number: 3, pages: 1436-1449

      SLU Authors

      • Sustainable Development Goals

      SDG11 Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

      UKÄ Subject classification

      Environmental Sciences
      Oceanography, Hydrology, Water Resources

      Publication identifier

      DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.9681

      Permanent link to this page (URI)

      https://res.slu.se/id/publ/43450