Conclusion
At Lake Peters, multiple-regression models provided insight into complex, catchment-scale, physical processes. Under the current regime, seasonal rainfall generated floods are the dominant driver of fluvial sediment transfer to Lake Peters, and high total water discharge lends to Carnivore Creek contributing the majority of the total sediment yield. Secondary melt processes are associated with clockwise diurnal hysteresis, and data revealed seasonal sediment exhaustion in Chamberlin Creek. A glaciological study would be required to more definitively associate glacier dynamics with the hydrological results. Albeit different years of monitoring, the SSYs we estimated for the Lake Peters catchment are comparable with the Chandler, Itkillik, and upper Sagavanirktok Rivers, Arctic Alaska.
A combination of escalating arctic melt processes (McGrath, Sass, O’Neel, Arendt, & Kienholz, 2017; Nolan, Arendt, Rabus, & Hinzman, 2005) associated with warming air temperatures, mixed snow and rain precipitation regimes (McAfee, Walsh, & Rupp, 2014), and significant rainfall (Bintanja & Andry, 2017), are likely to increase freshwater discharge (Holland, Finnis, & Serreze, 2006; Lammers, Shiklomanov, Vӧrӧsmarty, Fekete, & Peterson 2001; O’Neel, Hood, Arendt, & Sass, 2014) and sediment yields (Gordeev, 2006; Lewis & Lamoureux, 2010; Moore et al., 2001; Syvitski, 2002) over the coming decades, with few exceptions (Lamoureux 2000). Our results indicate that Lake Peters catchment will likely follow this trend. Negative feedback mechanisms, such as shrub expansion stabilizing soils (Tape et al., 2011), and exhaustion of proglacial sediment sources in some catchments (Church & Slaymaker, 1989), might buffer the increases of sediment, but such feedback mechanisms are uncertain without further arctic hydrology and geomorphology systems research.