Klein et al. (2005, Can. J. For. Res. 35: 1931–1941) compare aerial photographs and report dramatically lower lake levels on the northern Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. They hypothesize that the lower lake levels may be caused by a decline in moisture surplus driven by climate change. However, the reported decline in surplus appears to be insufficient to explain the lower lake levels. Here I develop a simple sensitivity analysis to test their hypothesis and also show how tectonic processes such as the Great Alaskan earthquake could dramatically lower lake levels by fracturing an underlying aquitard. Tectonic processes, therefore, could potentially alter forest succession and wetland ecosystems by inducing hydrologic changes that mimic changes in climate.
Several wetland classification schemes are now commonly used to describe wetlands in the contiguous United States to meet local, regional, and national regulatory requirements. However, these established systems have proven to be insufficient to meet the needs of land managers in Alaska. The wetlands of this northern region are predominantly peatlands, which are not adequately treated by the nationally-used systems, which have few, if any, peatland classes. A new system was therefore devised to classify wetlands in the rapidly urbanizing Cook Inlet Basin of southcentral Alaska, USA. The Cook Inlet Classification (CIC) is based on seven geomorphic and six hydrologic components that incorporate the environmental gradients responsible for the primary sources of variation in peatland ecosystems. The geomorphic and hydrologic components have the added advantage of being detectable on remote sensing imagery, which facilitates regional mapping across large tracts of inaccessible terrain. Three different quantitative measures were used to evaluate the robustness and performance of the CIC classes relative to that of other commonly used systems in the contiguous United States. The high within-group similarity of the classes identified by the CIC was clearly superior to that of the other systems, demonstrating the need for improved wetland classification systems specifically devised for regions with a high cover of peatlands.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.