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Decadal Response of Arctic Freshwaters to Burgeoning Goose Populations

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Abstract

The Arctic is faced with rapid climatic changes, but in some areas, drastic changes in the abundance of herbivores represent an even greater agent of change. Increasing goose populations, especially midcontinent lesser snow geese (Chen caerulescens), have led to an extensive loss of vegetation in terrestrial habitats in the Arctic through heavy grazing and destructive foraging. Our aim was to evaluate the effect of geese on the freshwater systems in their Arctic breeding grounds. We sampled the water chemistry of lakes and ponds across a major goose breeding area in the Eastern Canadian Arctic and compared results to samples taken 13 years earlier to determine whether the changes in water chemistry, if evident, were consistent with effects of geese or of climate. Our results suggest that nutrient loadings have increased while most other parameters associated with the underlying geology and hydrology of the region have stayed in a similar range as a decade ago. The most significant changes were linked to nitrogen and phosphorus; phosphorus concentrations doubled between 2001/2002 and 2015, with the highest levels and greatest changes observed for wetlands inside versus outside of goose breeding areas. Our results suggest that geese are most strongly affecting nutrient loads in freshwaters inside breeding areas, which show evidence of ornithological eutrophication. Nutrient changes of this magnitude, especially in typically oligotrophic Arctic lakes, can have profound consequences on ecosystem structure and function and demonstrate how burgeoning waterfowl populations can act as a vector of rapid environmental change in Arctic freshwaters.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support for data collection and analyses was provided in part by the Arctic Goose Joint Venture, the Canadian Wildlife Service, the Wildlife Research Division of Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Polar Continental Shelf Program. H.L.M was supported by a W. Garfield Weston Fellowship for Northern Studies. Thank you to K.F. Abraham and T. Kemper for informative discussions and logistical support during the helicopter surveys. We thank DE Schindler and two anonymous referees for insightful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wildlife Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, 1125 Colonel By Dr., Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0H3, Canada

    Heather L. Mariash & Paul A. Smith

  2. Biology, Acadia University, 33 Westwood Ave., Wolfville, Nova Scotia, B4P 2R6, Canada

    Mark Mallory

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  1. Heather L. Mariash
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Correspondence to Heather L. Mariash.

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Author’s Contributions

All authors conceived and designed the study. HM carried out the 2015 sampling campaign, both HM and PS analyzed the data. All authors contributed to data interpretation and writing of the paper.

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Mariash, H.L., Smith, P.A. & Mallory, M. Decadal Response of Arctic Freshwaters to Burgeoning Goose Populations. Ecosystems 21, 1230–1243 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-017-0215-z

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