Resolving the climate-controlled hydrological regime in a model permafrost catchment for future management strategies

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.125189
• Publication Date: 2025-04-22T01:01:54Z
• Authors: Łukasz Stachnik; Krzysztof Migała; Mirosław Wąsik; Henryk Marszałek; Aleksandra Wołoszyn; Marek Kasprzak; Elżbieta Łepkowska; Natalia Pilguj; Dariusz Ignatiuk; Anna Zielonka; Maciej Bartosiewicz
• Keywords: Hydrological modelling; Catchment hydrology

Climate change influences worldwide freshwaters with the most prominent effects in Arctic and Alpine regions. Environmental management proglacial zones underlain by permafrost requires understanding of hydrological regimes water retention patterns. However, there is limited long-term data on catchment-scale freshwater flow for ecosystems within continuous zones. Here, we characterized hydrometeorological controls glacial-fluvio-lacustrine regime a model catchment (SW Svalbard) to inform contingency plans regions endangered glacial-floods landslides. We compiled comprehensive hydro-meteorological dataset between 2005 2019 from larger database (1972-2019) applied bootstrapping, random forest, multiple regressions, elucidate relationships drivers (temperatures, sunshine duration, precipitation) intensity flows. The hydrology exhibits strong seasonality pronounced peak June July controlled precipitation (R = 0.56). From August September, low-to-intermediate discharge interactive air temperatures 0.71). interaction hydrometeorology stronger September compared July. strongest warming trend (1979-2019) makes this period particularly relevant regards changes environmental permafrost-underlain catchments. Indeed, our northern hemisphere meta-analysis (n 1975) revealed that majority glacial floods (51 %) occurs at time. argue should include monitoring surface temperature, snow cover enabling establishment stabilizing infrastructure sensitive whenever threshold values are exceeded (i.e., Tmin >4 °C; P > 30 mm) discharges increase.