High-resolution maps of ice wedge polygon occurrence and geomorphology

• Main Authors: Abolt, Charles J, Young, Michael H
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science 2019
• Subjects: Arctic; ice wedge; permafrost; thermokarst; File content; File name; File format; File size; Uniform resource locator/link to file; LiDAR, terrestrial; Ice; Prudhoe Bay; Thermokarst; wedge*; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.910178; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.910178

We mapped the occurrence of more than one million ice wedge polygons over a landscape of approximately 1,200 square kilometers, just south of Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska, USA. The microtopographic relief at the center of each polygon was then calculated relative to the periphery, as a proxy for low-centered or high-centered form. Polygon boundaries are presented as shapefiles in UTM Zone 6N coordinates; the centroid, area, and relative elevation at the center of each instance are included in the associated attribute tables. Each shapefile covers one square kilometer of terrain; a unified attribute table in tab-delineated format is also provided. Additionally, the lidar-derived elevation data used as input for the mapping procedure are presented in GeoTIFF (rasterized) and LAZ (point-cloud) formats, and code (written in MATLAB vR2017b) has been uploaded. Additional information regarding the creation of the data sets can be found in the accompanying manuscript in Scientific Data.