Nordicana D69 / DOI : 10.5885/45615CE-1A0AFEFB748D4457

Concentrations, fluxes and isotopic signatures of greenhouse gases emitted from lakes and ponds on Bylot Island, Nunavut, Canada

Vilmantas Preskienis^1,2,3, Isabelle Laurion^1,2, Frédéric Bouchard^1,2,4, Peter Douglas^2,5, Michael F.Billett⁶, Daniel Fortier^7,2, Xiaomei Xu⁸, Milla Rautio^3,2
¹Institut national de la recherche scientifique - Centre Eau Terre Environnement, Québec, Canada
²Centre d'études nordiques, Université Laval, Québec, Canada
³Département des Sciences Fondamentales, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Saguenay, Québec, Canada
⁴Département de géomatique appliquée, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada
⁵Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and GEOTOP, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
⁶Biological and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK
⁷Département de Géographie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada
⁸Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, USA

Abstract

Arctic lakes and ponds can be hot spots for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet studies are scarce, particularly outside the peak summer season. Here we present GHG diffusive and ebullition flux data collected over a decade from a range of water bodies formed on an organic-rich, polygonal landscape originating from syngenetic permafrost. The GHG concentrations and flux data are supplemented with radiocarbon and stable isotope signatures of the emitted gases, together with limnological properties of the studied lakes and ponds.

Data citation

Preskienis, V., Laurion, I., Bouchard, F., Douglas, P., Billett, M.F., Fortier, D., Xu, X., Rautio, M. 2023. Concentrations, fluxes and isotopic signatures of greenhouse gases emitted from lakes and ponds on Bylot Island, Nunavut, Canada, v. 1.0 (2008-2017). Nordicana D69, doi: 10.5885/45615CE-1A0AFEFB748D4457.

Location map

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Parks Canada, the Centre for Northern Studies (CEN) and G. Gauthier for helping with logistics during fieldwork, A. Veillette, M. Tremblay, Y. Seyer, T. Pacoureau and F. Mazoyer for their assistance with collecting and processing of the samples, M. Bartosiewicz and S. MacIntyre for advice on data analyses, and S. Duval and T. Hao Bui for gas chromatography and stable isotope analyses. The study was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery program, Network of Centres of Excellence ArcticNet, Natural Resources Canada Polar Continental Shelf Program, International Polar Year, and Fonds de recherche du Québec—Nature et technologies team grant (IL), as well as the CREATE program EnviroNorth (VP) and the W. Garfield Weston Foundation (FB). We also thank the NERC Radiocarbon Facility and M. Garnett for supporting and contributing to 14C analysis through allocations 1857.1014 and 1995.0416.