Mapped ice wedge polygon patterns from GeoEye-1, WorldView-1, 2008-2010 at four sites in Siberia and Alaska

DOI

Detailed calculations of ground-ice volumes in permafrost deposits are necessary to understand and quantify the response of permafrost landscapes to thermal disturbance and thawing. Ice wedges with their polygonal surface expression are a widespread ground-ice component of permafrost lowlands. Therefore, the wedge-ice volume (WIV) is one of the major factors to be considered, both for assessing permafrost vulnerability and for quantifying deep permafrost soil carbon inventories. Here, a straightforward tool for calculating the WIV is presented. This GIS and satellite image-based method provides an interesting approach for various research disciplines where WIV is an important input parameter, including landscape and ecosystem modeling of permafrost thaw or organic carbon assessments in deep permafrost deposits. By using basic data on subsurface ice-wedge geometry, our tool can be applied to other permafrost region where polygonal-patterned ground occurs. One is able to include individual polygon geomorphometry at a specific site and the shape and size of epigenetic and/or syngenetic ice wedges in three dimensions. Exemplarily, the WIV in late Pleistocene Yedoma deposits and Holocene thermokarst deposits is calculated at four case study areas in Siberia and Alaska. Therefore, we mapped ice-wedge polygons and thermokarst mounds (baydzherakhs) patters on different landscape units by using very-high-resolution satellite data. Thiessen polygons were automatically created in a geographic information system (GIS) environment to reconstruct relict ice-wedge polygonal networks from baydzherakh center-point patterns. This information was combined with literature or own field data of individual ice-wedge sizes, to generate three-dimensional subsurface models that distinguish between epi- and syngenetic ice-wedge geometry. We demonstrate that the WIV can vary considerably, not only between different permafrost regions, but also within a certain study site.Detailed information about methods and results can be found in the publication to which this dataset is a supplement (https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp.1810).

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.919936
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp.1810
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.919936
Provenance
Creator Ulrich, Mathias (ORCID: 0000-0002-1337-252X); Grosse, Guido ORCID logo; Strauss, Jens ORCID logo; Schirrmeister, Lutz ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2020
Funding Reference Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bonn https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001659 Crossref Funder ID 164232461 https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/164232461 Polygons in tundra wetlands: state and dynamics under climate variability in Polar Regions; Federal Ministry of Education and Research https://doi.org/10.13039/501100002347 Crossref Funder ID 01DM12011 https://foerderportal.bund.de/foekat/jsp/SucheAction.do?actionMode=view&fkz=01DM12011 Organic matter characteristics of ice-rich permafrost deposits of the Alaskan North Slope Region
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 80 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-164.446W, 66.540S, 117.911E, 73.565N); Siberia, Russia; Russia; North Yakutia, Russia; Alaska, USA