Climate and Permafrost 49 Identification of permafrost zones using selected permafrost landforms

• Main Author: Stuart A. Harris
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canada; Norway; Bergen; Ice; palsas; Peat; permafrost; wedge*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.542.1587; http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/cpc/cpc4-49.pdf

This paper examines the possibility of using the distribution of zonal permafrost landforms to aid in mapping permafrost distributions. In areas with under 50 cm snow cover in winter, permafrost zones can be defined by freezing and thawing indices. The relationship works for Norway, Spitz-bergen, Canada, and Mongolia. Since these include a wide range of thermal environments, it is pos-sible to trace the thermal ranges of various periglacial landforms. The zone of continuous permafrost markedly transgresses mean annual air temperature isotherms and is delimited by areas of Holocene felsenmeer and ice-wedge polygons in mineral soils. Active ice wedges in peats, earth hummocks, and cementery mounds, non-sorted polygons, and open system pin-gos extend into the zone of discontinuous permafrost. Sorted polygons and closed system pingos extend even further. Palsas, peat plateaux, and ice caves extend from the zone of continuous permafrost into that of sporadic permafrost in Norway and QuCbec. Cette Ctude examine la possibilite d'utiliser la rtpartition des formes de terrains lites au pergelisol zonal pour faciliter la cartographie de la rtpartition du pergtlisol. Dans les regions ou la couverture de neige est inftrieure a 50 cm en hiver, les zones de pergtlisol peuvent Ptre dkfinies a I'aide d'indices