Developing a method for continuously monitoring dissolved organic carbon concentration in boreal forest headwater streams

Abstract

Headwater streams are an important medium through which carbon from the landscape is transported into aquatic ecosystems in the form of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), an ecologically significant and, until the last decade, underestimated pool of mobile carbon. Boreal forests contain a great fraction of the worlds terrestrial carbon and are considered a large carbon sink. However, they are vulnerable to climate change and can easily become sources of atmospheric carbon. To better understand how our landscapes are responding to climate change we can monitor DOC within headwater streams which integrate and quickly respond to changes of the surrounding landscape. However, continuous monitoring for DOC is difficult and must be monitored via proxy-measurements. This thesis demonstrates an approach to develop and monitor the performance of a model developed to estimate DOC from UV-VIS absorbance and other data from in-situ probes.