Glacier hydrochemistry, solute provenance, and chemical denudation at a surge-type glacier in Kuannersuit Kuussuat, Disko Island, West Greenland

Subglacial and Proglacial Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change

“…In basal ice at the margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet, found that OC comprised 0.15 -0.21% by mass of the total debris content. This is in accordance with previous findings of 0.27% OC by mass in suspended sediment emanating from Kuannersuit Glacier on Disko Island, West Greenland (Yde et al, 2005), and indicates that OC is potentially available for heterotrophic metabolism after centuries of glacier cover . Even after about 100.000 years of glacier cover, OC of 0.002% has been detected beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet (Tung et al, 2006).…”

Meltwater chemistry and solute export from a Greenland Ice Sheet catchment, Watson River, West Greenland

“…Major anion (Cl À , NO 3 À , SO 4 2À ) concentrations were determined using a Perkin-Elmer ion chromatograph, and alkalinity (hereafter referred to as HCO 3 À ) concentrations were estimated by charge balance. Precision errors were ±5% for Na + , Mg 2+ and SO 4 2À , and ±10% for K + , Ca 2+ and Si (Yde et al, 2005). For Cl À and NO 3 À values that were close to their detection limits of 1.5 and 0.8 leq l À1 , respectively, the precision errors were likely to be higher than ±5%.…”

“…Annual solute export was determined by using various conceptual models, where ion concentrations in spot samples were related to continuous discharge records and the product was interand extrapolated to cover the entire discharge period (Sharp et al, 1995;Hodgkins et al, 1997;Wadham et al, 1997;Hodson et al, 2000Hodson et al, , 2002Hodson et al, , 2010Yde et al, 2005Yde et al, , 2008Krawczyk and Bartoszewski, 2008;Feng et al, 2012). In this study we apply both a discharge-weighted and a mean daily method to estimate annual solute exports.…”

“…Throughout the ablation season meltwaters emanating from glaciers are transportcontrolled; i.e. solute export is controlled by the production of bulk meltwater (Tranter et al, 1996Hodgkins et al, 1997;Wadham et al, 1997Wadham et al, , 1998Hodson et al, 2002Hodson et al, , 2010Anderson et al, 2003;Yde et al, 2005Yde et al, , 2008Mitchell and Brown, 2007;Krawczyk and Bartoszewski, 2008;Feng et al, 2012). However, it is also conceptualized that bulk meltwater consists of a mixture of sub-components with different ion concentrations (Collins, 1979;Tranter and Raiswell, 1991;Tranter et al, 1993).…”

“…a uniform gneissic lithology (Ryo and Jacobson, 2012) and uniform input of marine-derived solutes. Meltwaters draining gneissic glacierized catchments have a different ionic composition and lower weathering rates compared to meltwaters draining basaltic (Gíslason et al, 1996;Yde et al, 2005;Pogge von Strandmann et al, 2006), carbonate (Liu et al, 2000;Lafrenière and Sharp, 2005;Kumar et al, 2009) and sedimentary (Yde et al, 2008(Yde et al, , 2012Rutter et al, 2011) catchments. Hence, assuming a uniform gneissic lithology for Greenland will result in an underestimation of the solute export because parts of central West and East Greenland have Tertiary basaltic rocks and sedimentary rocks are found in West, North and East Greenland (Escher and Watt, 1976).…”