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Geometry of oriented lakes in Old Crow Flats,
northern Yukon
P. Roy-Léveillée
École de dévelopment du nord, Université Laurentienne, Sudbury,
Ontario, Canada
C.R. Burn
Department of Geography, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
ABSTRACT
Old Crow Flats is an interior basin with thousands of thermokarst lakes. These lakes have irregular shapes where they
are surrounded by trees and tall shrubs that may remain rooted after bank subsidence and protect the underlying
sediment from erosion. In polygonal tundra, the vegetation cover is easily removed and wave action can erode and
redistribute bank sediment to form rectilinear shores. The majority of lakes with rectilinear shores are aligned parallel to
dominant winds and expand most rapidly in this direction. This is contrary to the oriented lakes of the Arctic coastal plain
and is due to the fine texture of glacio-lacustrine deposits in OCF, which contain very little sediment sufficiently coarse to
accumulate near-shore along the leeward side of the lake, leaving the bank vulnerable to thermo-mechanical erosion
caused by wave action.
RÉSUMÉ
La plaine d’Old Crow est un basin intérieur parsemé de milliers de lacs thermokarstiques. Ces lacs sont de forme
irrégulière lorsqu’ils sont entourés de fardoche et d’arbres qui peuvent rester enracinés malgré l’affaissement des
berges, et qui empêchent ainsi l’érosion des sédiments sous-jacents. Dans la toundra, où le couvert végétal est
facilement rompu, les vagues érodent et redistribuent les sédiments pour former des rivages rectilignes. La plupart de
ces lacs sont parallèles aux vents dominants et ont une croissance accélérée dans cette direction, ce qui est contraire à
la configuration des lacs de la plaine côtière de l’Arctique. Cette différence est due à l a granulométrie fine des dépôts
glacio-lacustres de la plaine d’Old Crow: très peu de sédiments sont suffisamment grossiers pour s’accumuler près des
berges exposées au vent, laissant ces dernières vulnérables à l’action thermo-mecanique érosive des vagues.
1 INTRODUCTION
Field evidence indicates that the orientation and shape of
thaw lakes near the western North American Arctic coast
reflect the effects of wave action and wind-generated
currents on shore erosion and sediment transport
(Mackay 1956; Rex 1961; Carson and Hussey 1962;
Mackay 1963; Côté and Burn 2002). Oriented thaw lakes
are also found in interior basins, such as Old Crow Flats
(OCF), northern Yukon (Roy-Leveillee and Burn 2010),
where little is known of the factors controlling their
development and morphometry (Mackay 1956; Côté and
Burn 2002). In this paper we discuss the distribution and
characteristics of oriented lakes in OCF. We examine
variations in lakeshore geometry within the Flats and use
a combination of field observations and aerial
photographs to discuss relations between patterns of lake
expansion and lake orientation.
1.1 Background
Along the western North American Arctic coast, clusters of
thermokarst lakes are oriented perpendicular to the
dominant wind direction (Carson and Hussey 1962;
Mackay 1963). This orientation has been attributed to
longshore sediment drifting and wind-driven circulation
patterns. Rex (1961) used hydrodynamic principles to
show that longshore sediment drifting is greatest where
the angle between the wave orthogonals and the normal
to the shoreline is approximately 50º, and least where
waves are parallel to shore. A prevailing wind direction
results in the development of an elongated form with
sediment accumulation near the centre of the leeward
shore and maximum sediment transport near the ends of
the lake, where shoreline curvature is often accentuated
(Rex 1961). Carson and Hussey (1962) provided field
observations supporting this model, and indicated that
sediment accumulation on the leeward side of the lake
protects the shore from wave action and is the key
process for the initiation of lake elongation perpendicular
to the prevailing wind direction. They also suggested that
expansion perpendicular to the prevailing winds is
accelerated in large lakes due to wind-driven circulation
cells that create currents of sufficient strength to erode the
lake ends. Recent remotely sensed images of gyres in
oriented lakes of the Alaskan Arctic coastal plain support
this circulation model, and confirm that the development
of such currents increases with lake size and wind velocity
(Zhan et al. 2014).
Oriented lakes can also develop parallel to the
dominant wind direction, as observed in parts of the Lena
River delta and in OCF (Morgenstern et al. 2011; Roy-
Leveillee and Burn 2010), but information regarding the
development of lakes with such an orientation is scarce.
1.2 Old Crow Flats
OCF (Fig. 1) is a 5600 km2 wetland containing thousands
of thermokarst lakes and ponds. It is within the forest-
tundra ecotone of northern Yukon, and is in the
continuous permafrost zone. The vegetation cover is a
heterogeneous mosaic of woodlands, tall shrubs, low
Figure 1 Location map of Old Crow Flats showing (a) northern Yukon with extent of Glacial Lake Old Crow in Bell,
Bluefish, and Old Crow basins. The approximate maximum limit of the Laurentide Ice Sheet is shown in light grey (after
Zazula et al., 2004, Fig. 1); and (b) a generalized map of land cover structure in OCF where lakes are in black, low
shrubs, herbaceous vegetation, bryophytes and barren ground are in beige, and tall shrubs, woodlands and coniferous
forest are in green (modified from Turner et al 2014, Fig. 4)
shrubs, and herbaceous communities (Turner et al. 2014).
OCF was not glaciated during the Wisconsinan Stage but
was submerged beneath a 13,000 km2 glacial lake that
drained catastrophically 15,000 years ago (Fig. 1a)
(Zazula et al. 2004). The glaciolacustrine silts and clays
are blanketed with peat. River-bank exposures indicate
that excess ice in the upper 40 m of the ground is limited
to the glaciolacustrine sediments, which are up to 9 m
thick (Matthews et al. 1990). Permafrost temperatures at
the depth of zero annual amplitude vary between -5.1ºC
and -2.6ºC, depending primarily on snow cover (Roy-
Léveillée et al. 2014).
The mean annual air temperature at Old Crow, the
nearest community, is -8.3ºC (Environment Canada
climate data are available at http://climate.weather.gc.ca/,
accessed on May 23rd, 2015). The Old Crow wind record
is short and incomplete, but wind speed and direction
recorded during 1996 – 2014 indicate that winds are
primarily from the NE during the open water season,
which extends from June to October. Roy-Léveillée and
Burn (2010) found a similar wind distribution in a tundra
area near Johnson Creek in June to August 2008-09, with
68% of winds over 4 m/s from the NE and ENE (Fig. 2).
The lakes of OCF lack littoral shelves and are shallow,
with a mean depth of 1 to 1.5 m. They exhibit key features
Figure 2. Frequency distribution of wind speed and
direction during the 2008-09 open water seasons in OCF,
modified from Roy-Leveille and Burn (2010) and adjusted
to represent windspeed 10 m above the ground following
Resio et al. (2002).
Figure 3. Lake geometry and shore erosion in tundra and taiga areas. a) Oriented lakes with rectilinear shorelines in an
areas where the vegetation cover is dominated by low shrubs and grasses; b) shore section with overhanging peat
curtains and thermo-erosional niche (bank height = 3 m); c) lakes with irregular shorelines in an area where the
vegetation cover is dominated by taiga; d) shore section protected from thermo-mechanical erosion by partly submerged
trees and tall shrubs (bank height = 2 m).
of the thermokarst lake cycle, such as lake expansion by
thawing of ground ice and catastrophic drainage, followed
by permafrost recovery and lake re-initiation. Drained lake
basins are abundant throughout the Flats, commonly with
deeply incised outlets. In parts of OCF, the lakes and
drained basins have strikingly rectilinear shorelines
whereas in other parts lakes tend to have irregular
shapes. Morrell and Dietrich (1993) suggested that the
orientation and morphology of OCF lakes may be
controlled by underlying geology, but field observations of
rapidly receding rectilinear shores suggest that
geometrical control by static underlying features is unlikely
(Roy-Leveillee and Burn 2010).
In order to discuss controls on lake geometry and
orientation in OCF we (1) discuss field observations of
shoreline conditions associated with different lake
geometries; (2) compare the distribution of lake
orientation to wind patterns during the open water season;
and (3) investigate patterns of shore recession in lakes of
different geometries, orientations, and sizes.
2 METHODOLOGY
2.1 Field conditions at thermokarst lakeshores
The distribution of lakes with irregular and rectilinear
shores was examined on a map of OCF with land cover
grouped into tundra and taiga (Turner et al. 2014).
Several examples of lakes with irregular and rectilinear
shores were examined in the field, and bank
characteristics were described qualitatively and
photographed.
Lake-bottom sediment samples were collected in a
lake with rectilinear shores at distances of 0, 5, 10, and 20
m from a SW-facing shore with a 1600 m fetch. Twelve
samples from the top 2 m of the surrounding area were
used to represent the texture of bank sediment. Sediment
texture between 0.4 and 2000 μm was determined using a
Beckman Coulter LS 13 320 laser diffraction analyser
(Neville et al. 2014). The samples were loaded into the
machine until an obscuration level of 10 ±3% was reached
and statistics were computed using the Fraunhofer
diffraction model (Murray 2002; Neville et al. 2014). The
mean particle size distributions for lake-bottom samples
and for shore bank samples were used to build
histograms. The littoral cut-off diameter represents the
upper limit of particle sizes that are removed from the
littoral zone by wave action (Limber et al. 2008). It was
estimated as D10, the grain size for which 90% of a
sample is coarser and 10% is finer (Limber et al. 2008).
2.2 Lake orientation and shore recession
Lake orientation was determined using the ArcGIS
bounding containers toolbox (http://arcscripts.esri.com/
details.asp?dbid=14535) to provide a minimum area
bounding rectangle and long axis azimuth for all lakes and
ponds of OCF in the CanVec digital topographic dataset
of the National Topographic System, and for two
subsamples of 230 lakes each: lakes that were clearly
rectangular or triangular in the first subsample, and lakes
that did not have rectilinear shores, thus deemed
‘irregular’, in the second sample. Shore recession
between 1951 and 1996 was determined for a subsample
of 20 lakes using aerial photographs taken in 1951 and
1996. The images were superimposed and co-registered
using ice-wedge networks around the lakes. Lakes shores
were traced and total area of land eroded was calculated
for each lake as the difference between the 1996 and
1951 lake polygons. Mean erosion rate was estimated by
dividing the total area of land eroded by the perimeter of
the 1951 lake polygon. Shore recession in specific
locations was calculated along a normal to the 1951
shoreline. Where a strip of land was eroded due to shore
recession on two sides (e.g. during the complete erosion
of an island or the merging of lakes), recession rate was
calculated based on the width of land eroded divided by
two.
3 RESULTS
3.1 Field observations of shore conditions
3.1.1 Rectilinear and irregular shorelines
In OCF, lakes with rectilinear shores are generally in
polygonal tundra, where the vegetation cover is
dominated by low shrubs, grassy tussocks, and mosses
(Fig. 1b and 3a). When examined, the vegetation cover
was often ruptured at the top of the shore bank (Fig. 3b),
ripped along the bank slope, or peeled back by the action
of ice push, exposing the underlying unconsolidated
sediment. The few beaches along oriented lakeshores
were limited to shore sections sheltered from wave action
or formed temporarily along leeward shores during calm
periods.
Lakes with irregular shapes were generally expanding
in areas where patches of trees and tall shrubs dominated
the landscape (Fig. 1b and 3c, d). Standing trees and tall
shrubs rooted in submerged ground were found along the
shores. Live trees and shrubs were found closer to shore
banks and some dead shrubs were occasionally present
at the lakeward edge of the submerged vegetation. Water
bodies with irregular shorelines in areas dominated by
polygonal tundra were commonly remnant ponds within
drained lake basins. Water bodies of ≤0.01 km2 generally
had irregular shorelines, particularly where they formed
and expanded via degradation of ice wedges. In areas
dominated by tall shrubs and taiga, small lakes had
smoother shores.
3.1.2 Sediment texture
The sand fraction in near shore sediment was more than
twenty times that in the bank sediment, and the clay
fraction in near-shore sediment was reduced to 2% from
14% found in the banks. The mean littoral cut-off diameter
was 42 μm. Less than 4% of the mineral fraction in shore
bank sediment was coarser than 42 μm (Fig. 4).
Figure 4. Mean particle-size distribution in nearshore lake-
bottom sediment samples and bank samples. The littoral
cut-off diameter, D10, is shown with a vertical dashed line
(Limber et al. 2008). The portion of the bank sediment
distribution that is coarser than D10 is shaded.
3.2 Lake orientation
In OCF, the proportion of oriented lakes increases with
lake size (Fig. 5a, b, c, d). Waterbodies ≤0.01 km2 have
no dominant orientation, but those between 0.01 km2 and
1 km2 are more often oriented NE-SW and ENE-WSW
(Fig. 4a and b), i.e., parallel to dominant winds (Fig. 2).
Beyond 1 km2 the proportion of lakes oriented
perpendicular to dominant winds increases and the
distribution of lake orientations progressively becomes
bimodal. Lakes larger than 10 km2 are almost exclusively
oriented perpendicular to prevailing winds (Fig. 5d). Only
13 water bodies fall in the latter size category, but they
represent over 20% of the total lake area in OCF, making
them, and their orientation, noticeable features of the
Flats, as noted by Mackay (1956). Rectangular and
triangular lakes are aligned either parallel or perpendicular
to dominant winds in 90% of the cases (Fig. 5e). Lakes
and ponds with irregular shapes do not have a dominant
orientation overall (Fig. 5f), but lakes >1 km2 are
Figure 5. Distribution of lake and pond orientation for different size classes in OCF.
aligned parallel or perpendicular to dominant winds in
approximately 60% of the cases, 10% more frequently
than if lakes orientations were evenly distributed. The
lakes of OCF are surrounded with paleoshorelines and
drained basins outlines. Near Johnson Creek (Fig. 1b),
where oriented lakes are abundant, numerous drained
lake basin outlines are clearly visible. Similar to lakes,
small basins are oriented parallel to prevailing winds and
larger basins perpendicular. Triangular basins, similar to
triangular lakes, are oriented perpendicular to prevailing
winds and are at least 5 km2 in area.
3.3 Shore erosion and lake expansion
During 1951-1996 lakes with rectilinear shores, including
large lakes oriented perpendicular to prevailing winds,
expanded most rapidly in a NE-SW direction (Fig. 6a, b, c,
e). Rapidly eroding shore sections were irregular at the
local scale (10 to 100 m), largely due to differences in
erosion rates between ice wedges and polygon centres,
but appeared smooth when considered at a larger scale.
For this reason, water bodies smaller than 0.01 km2
generally did not have rectilinear shores in polygonal
tundra (Fig. 6g). However, water bodies larger than 0.01
km2 developed increasingly rectilinear shores as they
expanded (Fig. 6e). Lakes with irregular shores had no
clear directional trend for expansion, but shore erosion
proceeded fastest for islands and peninsulas, causing
lakes to become less irregular as they expanded (Fig. 6d).
4 DISCUSSION
In order for sediment drifting to lead to the genesis of
oriented thaw lakes as described for the North American
Arctic coastal plain (Rex 1961; Carson and Hussey 1962),
unconsolidated sediment must be available for
redistribution and accumulation along the leeward shores.
More specifically, two conditions must be fulfilled: 1) the
thawing of lakeshore banks must yield unconsolidated
sediment for transport in the littoral zone, which is
facilitated if wave action, ice push, or mass-wasting
processes result in the destruction of the vegetation cover
to expose underlying sediment to erosion; and 2) long-
shore sediment drifting must lead to sufficient sediment
accumulation along leeward shores to impede thermo-
erosional processes associated with direct contact
between waves and the shore bank. These two conditions
can be used to explain characteristics of lake geometry
and orientation in OCF.
4.1 Rectilinear and irregular shorelines
Rectangular and triangular lakes are found in parts of
OCF dominated by low shrub polygonal tundra. There,
shore-bank vegetation cover is easily broken and
removed by ice push and wave action, exposing
unconsolidated sediment for erosion and transport. The
combination of zones of erosion and accumulation along
rectilinear shores indicates that ice push, solar radiation,
or other processes pertaining only to shore erosion cannot
be the fundamental mechanisms controlling lake
geometry (Mackay 1963). Consistently with descriptions
for lakes of the western North American Arctic coastal
plain, the rectilinear shores of oriented lakes in OCF
appear to result from differences in rates of sediment
removal and accumulation along shore banks. Prominent
shore features are exposed to more aggressive wave
action whereas bays are sheltered and may accumulate
sediment, resulting in a natural evening of the shoreline.
In parts of OCF where taiga and tall shrubs dominate
the landscape, vegetation can remain anchored in the
sediment after subsidence of the shore banks beneath
water level, and form a barrier protecting the shore from
wave action and ice push (Fig. 3c and d). With limited
Figure 6. Shore recession patterns between 1951 (dotted
line) and 1996 (solid line) in lakes of different sizes,
orientation, and geometry. Lakes a), b), c), e), and g) are
from areas dominated by low shrub tundra where lakes
and basins generally are oriented and have rectilinear
shores; lakes d), f), and h) are from areas dominated by
tall shrubs and taiga, where lakes generally had irregular
shapes. The location where the maximum rate of erosion
was measured is marked with a black triangle. Lake area
in 1996, total land loss to erosion and mean and
maximum erosion rates during 1945-96, are indicated for
each lake. *Lake area in 1945 is indicated for lake b).
removal of slumped sediment and no thermo-erosional
action at the bank foot, heat conduction from the lake into
the bank becomes the dominant process for permafrost
thaw and lake expansion Sediment redistribution along
the shore of these lakes is impeded by the persisting
vegetation cover, resulting in irregular lake shapes (Fig.
3b and d). Along shore sections where the vegetation
barrier is absent, thin, or exposed to very aggressive
wave action, processes similar to those prevailing in
polygonal tundra affect the shore bank.
This distribution of lakes with rectilinear and irregular
shores within a forest-tundra ecotone is consistent with
observations of thermokarst lake geometry north and
south of treeline. The clusters of oval, ellipsoid, triangular,
rectangular, and heart shaped oriented thaw lakes of the
Alaskan Arctic coast, the Siberian north coast, and the
Canadian western Arctic coast are limited to tundra
environments (Carson and Hussey 1962; Mackay 1963;
Morgenstern et al. 2008) whereas thermokarst lakes
expanding in unconsolidated sediment south of treeline
have irregular shorelines (e.g. Burn and Smith 1990;
Marsh et al. 2009).
4.2 Orientation of lakes with rectilinear shores
4.2.1 Parallel to prevailing winds
The increase in the proportion of oriented lakes with
increasing lake size indicates that the processes
controlling lake orientation are associated with shore
erosion and lake growth. The orientation and expansion of
tundra lakes parallel to prevailing winds in OCF is contrary
to reports on lakes of similar size on the Alaskan Arctic
coastal plain and the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, where
oriented lakes generally have their long axis
approximately perpendicular to the prevailing summer
winds (Mackay 1956).
However, Rex (1961) noted the importance of an
abundant, sandy sediment input to allow sediment
accumulation in the leeward littoral zone and, in OCF,
sediment input to the littoral zone from eroding lake banks
includes only a small fraction of fine sand (Fig. 4). When
comparing the texture of lake-bottom sediment near a
SW-facing shore to that of bank sediment, the majority of
the input sediment is smaller than the littoral cut-off
diameter and is apparently removed from the littoral zone
by wave action (Limber et al. 2008). This leaves only a
very small fraction of sediment available for longshore
drifting and accumulation in the littoral zone. Hence, the
textural characteristics of the sediment input impede
accumulation in the near-shore zone and allows waves to
reach the foot of the shore bank. Contact between waves
and the bank foot accelerates erosion by mechanically
removing slumped sediment and preventing a thawing
bank from stabilizing. Where there is contact between
water and permafrost, heat transfer into the bank is
greater than through accumulated sediment. We suggest
that this accelerated erosion of the leeward shores is
responsible for the NE-SW orientation of the majority of
lakes with rectilinear shores in OCF.
4.2.2 Perpendicular to prevailing winds
Large lakes and drained basins, particularly those that are
>10 km2 are almost exclusively oriented perpendicular to
the dominant wind directions. Some of these lakes and
basins have a triangular rather than a rectangular shape,
similar to lakes of the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula. The recent
expansion of these large lakes in a direction opposite to
their orientation (Fig. 6a and b), suggests that they are
likely not in equilibrium with current conditions. The
expansion pattern observed in 1951-1996 could not be
sustained for thousands of years without resulting in a
NE-SW orientation. Little information is available on past
wind patterns in the area, but Lauriol et al. (2002)
examined cliff-top aeolian deposits and report signs of
vigorous summer winds from the SW for several thousand
years after drainage of Glacial Lake Old Crow. There is
insufficient information to resolve the cause of the NW-SE
orientation of the lakes, but past increases in the intensity
of summer winds may have led to the development of
wind-induced circulation cells of sufficient strength to
cause shore erosion and lake elongation perpendicular to
prevailing winds, as observed on the Alaskan coastal
plain (Carson and Hussey 1962). Near Barrow and
Tuktoyaktuk, winds greater than 6 m/s are approximately
twice as frequent as in OCF, and recent lake expansion
patterns indicate that such erosion has not dominated the
larger lakes of OCF since the 1950s.
5 CONCLUSIONS
This paper examined the distribution of lakes with
irregular and rectilinear shores in relation to vegetation
structure in OCF, and discussed differences between the
oriented lakes of the OCF and lakes of the western North
American Arctic coastal plain. Our main findings are that:
(1) In areas where trees and tall shrubs surround the
lakes, the vegetation may remain rooted after bank
subsidence, protecting the shore from erosion and
impeding longshore sediment transport, leading to the
development of lakes with irregular shapes;
(2) Lakes with rectilinear shores are concentrated in areas
dominated by polygonal tundra, where the vegetation
cover is easily torn by wave action or ice push to expose
unconsolidated bank sediment to erosion and
redistribution by wave action;
(3) Contrary to the western North American Arctic coastal
plain, the majority of oriented lakes in OCF are oriented
parallel to prevailing winds. This orientation develops as
the glacio-lacustrine sediment of OCF is too fine to drift
and accumulate along leeward shores as described by
Rex (1961). Rather, the bulk of the sediment is
suspended and removed from the near shore zone by
wave action.
(4) Nearly all lakes > 10 km2 are oriented perpendicular to
dominant winds. Recent patterns of shore recession for
these lakes indicate that their orientation is not in
equilibrium with current conditions.
The oriented lakes of Old Crow Flats and those of the
North American Arctic coastal plain are both shaped and
oriented by wave action. However regional differences in
environmental conditions, primarily textural differences
between the sandy Pleistocene deposits of the coastal
plain and the glacio-lacustrine deposits of OCF, result in
contrasting responses to the dominant wind direction.
6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research was supported by the Government of
Canada International Polar Year program, the National
Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada,
the Polar Continental Shelf Program, Natural Resources
Canada, and the Northern Scientific Training Program,
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.
Essential logistical support was provided by the Vuntut
Gwitchin First Nation Government and the Aurora
Research Institute, Inuvik. We thank T. Patterson and M.
Pisaric for use of laboratory equipment. Several field
assistants contributed to data collection including A. J.
Jarvo, A.L. Frost, B. Brown, D. Charlie, E. Tizya-Tramm,
K. Tetlichi, L. Nagwan, M. Frost Jr., S. Njoutli, S. Frost,
and C.Z. Braul.
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