National Aeronautics and Space Administration

What is Arctic-COLORS?

Arctic-COLORS is a proposed NASA field campaign program designed to quantify the response of the Arctic coastal environment to global change and anthropogenic disturbances – an imperative for developing mitigation and adaptation strategies for the region. The Arctic-COLORS field campaign is unprecedented, as it represents the first attempt to study the nearshore coastal Arctic (from riverine deltas and estuaries out to the coastal sea) as an integrated land-ocean-atmosphere-biosphere system.

The overarching objective of Arctic-COLORS is to quantify the coupled biogeochemical/ecological response of the Arctic nearshore system to rapidly changing terrestrial fluxes and ice conditions. This focus on land-ocean interactions in the nearshore coastal zone is a unique contribution of Arctic-COLORS compared to other NASA field campaigns in polar regions.

The science of our field campaign will focus on three key science themes and several overarching science questions per theme:

  1. Effect of land on nearshore Arctic biogeochemistry
  2. Effect of ice on nearshore Arctic biogeochemistry
  3. Effects of future change (warming land and melting ice) on nearshore Arctic biogeochemistry
  1. Effect of land on nearshore Arctic biogeochemistry
    1. How do freshwater, carbon, nutrient, and sediment fluxes to the coastal zone change as a result of:
      1. changing riverine and groundwater inputs?
      2. passage through estuaries and gradients?
      3. coastal erosion and thawing permafrost?
    2. How do these changing fluxes affect nearshore Arctic biogeochemical and ecological processes?
    3. How has the relative magnitude of inputs from rivers and coastal erosion changed across the nearshore Arctic seasonally and interannually?
  2. Effect of ice on nearshore Arctic biogeochemistry
    1. How does flow alteration/channeling by morphological ice conditions impact terrestrial fluxes into, and attenuation within, the nearshore Arctic?
    2. How does the coastal snow/ice cover impact nearshore Arctic biogeochemical processes by controlling rates of mixing and by modulating light availability?
    3. How does the timing of sea ice formation/retreat, duration of sea ice cover and ablation, snow accumulation, and the morphology of the coastal ice zone influence nearshore Arctic biogeochemical and ecological processes?
  3. Effects of future change (warming land and melting ice) on nearshore Arctic biogeochemistry
    1. On seasonal and interannual time scales, how will changing land (Question 1) and melting ice (Question 2) impact nearshore Arctic biogeochemical and ecological processes?
    2. On interdecadal time scales, how will changing land (Question 1) and melting ice (Question 2) impact nearshore Arctic biogeochemical and ecological processes?
Picture

Schematic of Arctic-COLORS coastal dynamics linking the three overarching science questions. Processes represented by arrows as well as those labeled (permafrost dynamics, coastal erosion, landfast ice, etc.) will be examined at the interface of river estuaries and deltas with the coastal ocean. Larger and thicker arrows and text represent the higher priority processes and biogeochemical state variables that will be the focus of Arctic-COLORS. Also shown are examples of the sampling and measurement (or transportation) platforms that will be necessary to accompligh the Arctic-COLORS field campaign. A single satellite is shown to represent past, current, and future remote-sensing observations from multiple satellites.