Evaluating the Effects of Tundra Fires on Soil Microtopography and Hydrologic Surface Networks in Polygonal Permafrost Landscapes
With the Earth’s climate rapidly warming, the Arctic represents one of the most vulnerable regions to environmental change. These northern high latitude regions experience intensified fire seasons and especially tundra fires are projected to become more frequent and severe. Fires in permafrost regio...
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American Geophysical Union
2021
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ftawi:oai:epic.awi.de:55342 2024-09-15T18:11:26+00:00 Evaluating the Effects of Tundra Fires on Soil Microtopography and Hydrologic Surface Networks in Polygonal Permafrost Landscapes Rettelbach, Tabea Langer, Moritz Nitze, Ingmar Jones, Benjamin M. Helm, Veit Freytag, Johann-Christoph Grosse, Guido 2021-12-17 https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/55342/ https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.7629883a-6eab-4fc8-9489-e858b211f569 unknown American Geophysical Union Rettelbach, T. , Langer, M. orcid:0000-0002-2704-3655 , Nitze, I. orcid:0000-0002-1165-6852 , Jones, B. M. , Helm, V. orcid:0000-0001-7788-9328 , Freytag, J. C. and Grosse, G. orcid:0000-0001-5895-2141 (2021) Evaluating the Effects of Tundra Fires on Soil Microtopography and Hydrologic Surface Networks in Polygonal Permafrost Landscapes , AGU Fall Meeting 2021, Online, 13 December 2021 - 17 December 2021 . hdl:10013/epic.7629883a-6eab-4fc8-9489-e858b211f569 EPIC3AGU Fall Meeting 2021, Online, 2021-12-13-2021-12-17American Geophysical Union Conference notRev 2021 ftawi 2024-06-24T04:27:29Z With the Earth’s climate rapidly warming, the Arctic represents one of the most vulnerable regions to environmental change. These northern high latitude regions experience intensified fire seasons and especially tundra fires are projected to become more frequent and severe. Fires in permafrost regions have extensive impacts, including the initiation of thermokarst (rapid thaw of ice-rich ground), as they combust the upper organic soil layers which provide insulation to the permafrost below. Rapid permafrost thaw is, thus, often observable in fire scars in the first years post-disturbance. In polygonal ice-wedge landscapes, this becomes most prevalent through melting ice wedges and degrading troughs. The further these ice wedges degrade, the more troughs will likely connect and build an extensive hydrological network with changing patterns and degrees of connectivity that influences hydrology and runoff. While subsiding troughs over melting ice wedges may host new ponds, an increasing connectivity may also subsequently lead to more drainage of ponds, which in turn can limit further thaw and help stabilize the landscape. To quantify the changes in such dynamic landscapes over large regions, highly automated methods are needed that allow extracting information on the geomorphic state and changes over time of ice-wedge trough networks from remote sensing data. We developed a computer vision algorithm to automatically derive ice-wedge polygonal networks and the current microtopography of the degrading troughs from very high resolution, airborne laserscanning-based digital terrain models. We represent the networks as graphs (a concept from the computer sciences to describe complex networks) and apply methods from graph theory to describe and quantify hydrological network characteristics of the changing landscape. In fire scars, we especially observe rapidly growing networks and fast micromorphological change in those degrading troughs. In our study, we provide a space-for-time substitution comparing fire scars ... Conference Object Ice permafrost Thermokarst Tundra wedge* Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar- and Marine Research (AWI): ePIC (electronic Publication Information Center) |
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Open Polar |
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Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar- and Marine Research (AWI): ePIC (electronic Publication Information Center) |
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ftawi |
language |
unknown |
description |
With the Earth’s climate rapidly warming, the Arctic represents one of the most vulnerable regions to environmental change. These northern high latitude regions experience intensified fire seasons and especially tundra fires are projected to become more frequent and severe. Fires in permafrost regions have extensive impacts, including the initiation of thermokarst (rapid thaw of ice-rich ground), as they combust the upper organic soil layers which provide insulation to the permafrost below. Rapid permafrost thaw is, thus, often observable in fire scars in the first years post-disturbance. In polygonal ice-wedge landscapes, this becomes most prevalent through melting ice wedges and degrading troughs. The further these ice wedges degrade, the more troughs will likely connect and build an extensive hydrological network with changing patterns and degrees of connectivity that influences hydrology and runoff. While subsiding troughs over melting ice wedges may host new ponds, an increasing connectivity may also subsequently lead to more drainage of ponds, which in turn can limit further thaw and help stabilize the landscape. To quantify the changes in such dynamic landscapes over large regions, highly automated methods are needed that allow extracting information on the geomorphic state and changes over time of ice-wedge trough networks from remote sensing data. We developed a computer vision algorithm to automatically derive ice-wedge polygonal networks and the current microtopography of the degrading troughs from very high resolution, airborne laserscanning-based digital terrain models. We represent the networks as graphs (a concept from the computer sciences to describe complex networks) and apply methods from graph theory to describe and quantify hydrological network characteristics of the changing landscape. In fire scars, we especially observe rapidly growing networks and fast micromorphological change in those degrading troughs. In our study, we provide a space-for-time substitution comparing fire scars ... |
format |
Conference Object |
author |
Rettelbach, Tabea Langer, Moritz Nitze, Ingmar Jones, Benjamin M. Helm, Veit Freytag, Johann-Christoph Grosse, Guido |
spellingShingle |
Rettelbach, Tabea Langer, Moritz Nitze, Ingmar Jones, Benjamin M. Helm, Veit Freytag, Johann-Christoph Grosse, Guido Evaluating the Effects of Tundra Fires on Soil Microtopography and Hydrologic Surface Networks in Polygonal Permafrost Landscapes |
author_facet |
Rettelbach, Tabea Langer, Moritz Nitze, Ingmar Jones, Benjamin M. Helm, Veit Freytag, Johann-Christoph Grosse, Guido |
author_sort |
Rettelbach, Tabea |
title |
Evaluating the Effects of Tundra Fires on Soil Microtopography and Hydrologic Surface Networks in Polygonal Permafrost Landscapes |
title_short |
Evaluating the Effects of Tundra Fires on Soil Microtopography and Hydrologic Surface Networks in Polygonal Permafrost Landscapes |
title_full |
Evaluating the Effects of Tundra Fires on Soil Microtopography and Hydrologic Surface Networks in Polygonal Permafrost Landscapes |
title_fullStr |
Evaluating the Effects of Tundra Fires on Soil Microtopography and Hydrologic Surface Networks in Polygonal Permafrost Landscapes |
title_full_unstemmed |
Evaluating the Effects of Tundra Fires on Soil Microtopography and Hydrologic Surface Networks in Polygonal Permafrost Landscapes |
title_sort |
evaluating the effects of tundra fires on soil microtopography and hydrologic surface networks in polygonal permafrost landscapes |
publisher |
American Geophysical Union |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/55342/ https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.7629883a-6eab-4fc8-9489-e858b211f569 |
genre |
Ice permafrost Thermokarst Tundra wedge* |
genre_facet |
Ice permafrost Thermokarst Tundra wedge* |
op_source |
EPIC3AGU Fall Meeting 2021, Online, 2021-12-13-2021-12-17American Geophysical Union |
op_relation |
Rettelbach, T. , Langer, M. orcid:0000-0002-2704-3655 , Nitze, I. orcid:0000-0002-1165-6852 , Jones, B. M. , Helm, V. orcid:0000-0001-7788-9328 , Freytag, J. C. and Grosse, G. orcid:0000-0001-5895-2141 (2021) Evaluating the Effects of Tundra Fires on Soil Microtopography and Hydrologic Surface Networks in Polygonal Permafrost Landscapes , AGU Fall Meeting 2021, Online, 13 December 2021 - 17 December 2021 . hdl:10013/epic.7629883a-6eab-4fc8-9489-e858b211f569 |
_version_ |
1810449020261236736 |