Review
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Permafrost Hydrology Research Domain: Process-Based Adjustment
Version 1
: Received: 10 May 2019 / Approved: 13 May 2019 / Online: 13 May 2019 (10:20:01 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Tananaev, N.; Teisserenc, R.; Debolskiy, M. Permafrost Hydrology Research Domain: Process-Based Adjustment. Hydrology 2020, 7, 6. Tananaev, N.; Teisserenc, R.; Debolskiy, M. Permafrost Hydrology Research Domain: Process-Based Adjustment. Hydrology 2020, 7, 6.
Abstract
Permafrost hydrology is an emerging discipline, attracting increasing attention as the Arctic region is undergoing rapid change. However, the research domain of this discipline had never been explicitly formulated. Both 'permafrost' and 'hydrology' yield differing meanings across languages and scientific domains, hence 'permafrost hydrology' serves as an example of linguistic relativity. The differing views of permafrost as either an ecosystem class or a geographical region, and hydrology as a discipline concerned with either landscapes or generic water bodies, maintain a language-specific touch in the definition of permafrost hydrology. From this point of view, the English and Russian usage of this term is explained. A universal process-based definition is further proposed, developed on a specific process assemblage, including (i) water table dynamics caused by migration of an upper aquitard through freeze–thaw processes; (ii) water migration in soil matrix, driven by phase transitions in the active layer; (iii) transient water storage in solid state in the subsurface compartment. This definition is shown to fill the niche in existing vocabulary, and other definitions from northern hydrology field are revisited.
Keywords
active layer; Arctic hydrology; cold regions hydrology; linguistic relativity; permafrost hydrology
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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