Warming Unleashes Acid Flows From Minerals Once Locked Up In Permafrost - Entire Arctic Rivers Devoid Of Life

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An orange tributary of the Kugororuk River

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It was a cloudy July afternoon in Alaska's Kobuk Valley National Park, part of the biggest stretch of protected wilderness in the U.S. We were 95 kilometers (60 miles) from the nearest village and 400 kilometers from the road system. Nature doesn't get any more unspoiled. But the stream flowing past our feet looked polluted. The streambed was orange, as if the rocks had been stained with carrot juice. The surface glistened with a gasolinelike rainbow sheen. “This is bad stuff,” said Patrick Sullivan, an ecologist at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Sullivan, a short, bearded man with a Glock pistol strapped to his chest for protection against Grizzly Bears, was looking at the screen of a sensor he had dipped into the water. He read measurements from the screen to Roman Dial, a biology and mathematics professor at Alaska Pacific University. Dissolved oxygen was extremely low, and the pH was 6.4, about 100 times more acidic than the somewhat alkaline river into which the stream was flowing. The electrical conductivity, an indicator of dissolved metals or minerals, was closer to that of industrial wastewater than the average mountain stream. “Don't drink this water,” Sullivan said.

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Scientists compare data at a “burn”—a stretch of thawing ground where seeping water is so acidic it kills vegetation, turning it black. The orange color comes from the presence of iron mobilized by thawing.

Now, however, the Salmon is quite literally rusting. Tributary streams along one third of the 110-kilometer river are full of oxidized iron minerals and, in many cases, acid. “It was a famous, pristine river ecosystem,” Sullivan said, “and it feels like it's completely collapsing now.” The same thing is happening to rivers and streams throughout the Brooks Range—at least 75 of them in the past five to 10 years—and probably in Russia and Canada as well. This past summer a researcher spotted two orange streams while flying from British Columbia to the Northwest Territories. “Almost certainly it is happening in other parts of the Arctic,” said Timothy Lyons, a geochemist at the University of California, Riverside, who's been working with Dial and Sullivan.

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The U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service first began documenting the eerie changes in the Salmon River, which at one time was full of Dolly Varden Char, chum and pink salmon runs. The river flows 70 miles from where the tundra transitions into boreal forests. The water was clear with a green gravel bottom that gave the river an otherworldly clarity. USGS left a water sensor in the river and returned many years later. The green gravel bottom was smothered in orange slime. No fish or insects were left; biodiversity had collapsed in the study area.

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/21/2213104/-Arctic-rivers-are-turning-orange-with-iron-and-sulfuric-acid-showing-even-remote-areas-collapsing?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web