Saline permafrost degradation below a shallow thermokarst lake in northern Alaska, 2008-2023

• Main Authors: Benjamin Jones, Mikhail Kanevskiy, Andrew Parsekian, Helena Bergstedt, Melissa Ward Jones, Rodrigo Rangel, Kenneth Hinkel, Yuri Shur
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2023
• Subjects: Arctic; Geophysics; Remote Sensing; Saline Permafrost; Thermokarst Lakes; Barrow; permafrost; Thermokarst; Alaska
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18739/A20P0WS3K

This dataset supports the findings of the research paper submitted to the journal Geophysical Research Letters that documents the rapid thaw of saline permafrost below a shallow thermokarst lake near Utqiagvik, Alaska. The lake, East Twin Lake, is located in the Barrow Environmental Observatory. We conducted repeat drilling-based surveys at East Twin Lake in the Barrow Environmental Observatory near Utqiagvik, Alaska between 2008 and 2023. These field data were integrated with transient electromagnetic (TEM) near-surface geophysics soundings in 2016 and 2022 and analysis of a time-series of wintertime Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite imagery from 2015 to 2023 to assess changes in lake and sub-lake properties. Finally, we assessed the impact of thawing saline permafrost on shore erosion by quantifying a regime shift in the lateral expansion rate of East Twin Lake between 1948 and 2022. The datasets consist of a CSV file with the point measurements from the drilling campaign, processed TEM data along with the script, a table of SAR backscatter values extracted for three lakes, and a table with lake expansion rates for East Twin Lake.