Quantification of upland thermokarst features with high resolution remote sensing
TLDR
In this paper, the authors detected and mapped small, irregular thermokarst features occurring within an upland watershed in discontinuous permafrost of Interior Alaska, and found that 12% of the Eight Mile Lake watershed has undergone thermok-arst, predominantly in valleys where tussock tundra resides.Abstract:
Climate-induced changes to permafrost are altering high latitude landscapes in ways that could increase the vulnerability of the vast soil carbon pools of the region. Permafrost thaw is temporally dynamic and spatially heterogeneous because, in addition to the thickening of the active layer, localized thermokarst features form when ice-rich permafrost thaws and the ground subsides. Thermokarst produces a diversity of landforms and alters the physical environment in dynamic ways. To estimate potential changes to the carbon cycle it is imperative to quantify the size and distribution of thermokarst landforms. By performing a supervised classification on a high resolution IKONOS image, we detected and mapped small, irregular thermokarst features occurring within an upland watershed in discontinuous permafrost of Interior Alaska. We found that 12% of the Eight Mile Lake (EML) watershed has undergone thermokarst, predominantly in valleys where tussock tundra resides. About 35% of the 3.7 km2 tussock tundra class has likely transitioned to thermokarst. These landscape level changes created by permafrost thaw at EML have important implications for ecosystem carbon cycling because thermokarst features are forming in carbon-rich areas and are altering the hydrology in ways that increase seasonal thawing of the soil.read more
Citations
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Effects of institutional changes on land use: agricultural land abandonment during the transition from state-command to market-driven economies in post-Soviet Eastern Europe
Alexander V. Prishchepov,Alexander V. Prishchepov,Volker C. Radeloff,Matthias Baumann,Tobias Kuemmerle,Tobias Kuemmerle,Daniel Müller,Daniel Müller +7 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the effects of institutional changes on agricultural land abandonment in different countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union after the collapse of socialism and found that institutional settings play a key role in shaping land cover and land use.
Journal ArticleDOI
Reorganization of vegetation, hydrology and soil carbon after permafrost degradation across heterogeneous boreal landscapes
M. Torre Jorgenson,Jennifer W. Harden,Mikhail Kanevskiy,Jonathan A. O'Donnell,Kim Wickland,Stephanie A. Ewing,Kristen L. Manies,Qianlai Zhuang,Yuri Shur,Robert G. Striegl,Joshua C. Koch +10 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used a chronosequence approach to assess changes in vegetation composition, water storage and soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks along successional gradients within four landscapes: (1) rocky uplands on ice-poor hillside colluvium, (2) silty uplands with extremely ice-rich loess, (3) gravelly-sandy lowlands on eolian sand and (4) peaty-silty lowlands with thick peat deposits over reworked lowland loess.
Journal ArticleDOI
Elevated dissolved organic carbon biodegradability from thawing and collapsing permafrost
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors measured biodegradable DOC (BDOC) in water flowing from collapsing permafrost (thermokarst) on the North Slope of Alaska and tested the role of DOC chemical composition and nutrient concentration in determining Biodegradability.
Journal ArticleDOI
Distribution of near-surface permafrost in Alaska: Estimates of present and future conditions
Neal J. Pastick,M. Torre Jorgenson,Bruce K. Wylie,Shawn J. Nield,Kristofer D. Johnson,Andrew O. Finley +5 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors overcome complex interactions among surface and subsurface conditions to map near-surface permafrost through decision and regression tree approaches that statistically and spatially extend field observations using remotely sensed imagery, climatic data, and thematic maps of a wide range of surface and sub-surface biophysical characteristics.
Journal ArticleDOI
Permafrost collapse alters soil carbon stocks, respiration, CH4 , and N2O in upland tundra.
TL;DR: It was found that thermokarst morphology interacted with landscape parameters to determine both the initial displacement of organic matter and subsequent carbon and nitrogen cycling, and across morphologies, residual organic matter cover, and predisturbance respiration explained 83% of the variation in respiration response.
References
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