RIVER INPUT OF WATER, SEDIMENT, MAJOR IONS, NUTRIENTS AND TRACE METALS FROM RUSSIAN TERRITORY TO THE ARCTIC OCEAN

摘要

If we compare the main characteristics of river basins and water chemistry in western and eastern regions of the Russian Arctic basin (the boundary between two large regions crosses the Laptev Sea basin and coincides with a boundary between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates) (Table 10) then we see the existence of many differences between two regions. The rivers of the East Siberia in comparison with the rivers of the western part of the Russian Arctic are characterized by lower run-off, higher turbidity, and by significantly lower water mineralization, organic matter and nutrient concentrations. We noted that the East Siberian rivers (Yana, Alazeya, Indigirka, Kolyma) were even more similar to the North American Arctic rivers than to the rivers located westward of the Lena River. It is very interesting to define the place of the rivers of the Russian Arctic basin in the global scale. In Table 11 the main parameters of the Russian Arctic river input and the fluxes of total suspended load and dissolved constituents, related to the unit of watershed area, are given. We see that the fluxes of water, TDS, TOC and TDN for the Russian Arctic rivers are in proportion to area in ratio 0.5-0.6, NO_3 - 0.3, very low proportion for TSS - 0.1 and high proportion for PO_4 -1.46. The conclusion is from this Table that practically for all parameters (except PO_4) the river fluxes of the Russian sector of the Arctic ocean related to the area unit are significantly lower than the average characteristics of the global river discharge. At the same time, the influence of the Arctic river discharge to the Arctic ocean is much higher than in many other regions of the World Ocean due to very vast shelf and shallow depths of the coastal Arctic Seas.