Nutrients influence seasonal metabolic patterns and total productivity of Arctic streams

The seasonality of gross primary production (GPP) in streams is driven by multiple physical and chemical factors, yet incident light is often thought to be most important. In Arctic tundra streams, however, light is available in saturating amounts throughout the summer, but sharp declines in nutrient supply during the terrestrial growing season may constrain aquatic productivity. Given the opposing seasonality of these drivers, we hypothesized that shoulder seasons-spring and autumn-represent critical time windows when light and nutrients align to optimize rates of stream productivity in the Arctic. To test this, we measured annual patterns of GPP and biofilm accumulation in eight streams in Arctic Sweden. We found that the aquatic growing season length differed by 4 months across streams and was determined largely by the timing of ice-off in spring. During the growing season, temporal variability in GPP for nitrogen (N) poor streams was correlated with inorganic N concentration, while in more N-rich streams GPP was instead linked to changes in phosphorus and light. Annual GPP varied ninefold among streams and was enhanced by N availability, the length of ice-free period, and low flood frequency. Finally, network scale estimates of GPP highlight the overall significance of the shoulder seasons, which accounted for 48% of annual productivity. We suggest that the timing of ice off and nutrient supply from land interact to regulate the annual metabolic regimes of nutrient poor, Arctic streams, leading to unexpected peaks in productivity that are offset from the terrestrial growing season.

Automated summary

The study reveals that in Arctic streams, the alignment of light and nutrient supply during shoulder seasons - spring and autumn - plays a critical role in optimizing productivity. The timing of ice-off in spring determines the length of the aquatic growing season, with varying impacts of nutrients and light on GPP in different types of streams.