Hydro-climatic forcing of dissolved organic carbon in two boreal lakes of Canada.

The boreal forest of the northern hemisphere represents one of the world's largest ecozones and contains nearly one third of the world's intact forests and terrestrially stored carbon. Long-term variations in temperature and precipitation have been implied in altering carbon cycling in forest soils, including increased fluxes to receiving waters. In this study, we use a simple hydrologic model and a 40-year dataset (1971–2010) of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from two pristine boreal lakes (ELA, Canada) to examine the interactions between precipitation and landscape-scale controls of DOC production and export from forest catchments to surface waters. Our results indicate that a simplified hydrologically-based conceptual model can enable the long-term temporal patterns of DOC fluxes to be captured within boreal landscapes. Reconstructed DOC exports from forested catchments in the period 1901–2012 follow largely a sinusoidal pattern, with a period of about 37 years and are tightly linked to multi-decadal patterns of precipitation. By combining our model with long-term precipitation estimates, we found no evidence of increasing DOC transport or in-lake concentrations through the 20th century. Highlights: Rainfall is a driving force of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in lacustrine systems. We derive a parsimonious model of the hydro-climatic forcing of DOC. We analyze long-term hydrologic controls of DOC in two pristine boreal lakes (Canada). The model did not reveal increasing in-lake DOC concentrations through the 20th century.