The Potential of UAV Imagery for the Detection of Rapid Permafrost Degradation: Assessing the Impacts on Critical Arctic Infrastructure ...

• Main Authors: Kaiser, Soraya, Boike, Julia, Grosse, Guido, Langer, Moritz
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 2022
• Subjects: permafrost degradation; consumer-grade unoccupied aerial vehicle; North Slope Alaska; land surface displacement; point cloud alignment; structure from motion; M3C2; 550 Geowissenschaften; north slope; permafrost; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.18452/29104; https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/handle/18452/29723

Ground subsidence and erosion processes caused by permafrost thaw pose a high risk to infrastructure in the Arctic. Climate warming is increasingly accelerating the thawing of permafrost, emphasizing the need for thorough monitoring to detect damages and hazards at an early stage. The use of unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) allows a fast and uncomplicated analysis of sub-meter changes across larger areas compared to manual surveys in the field. In our study, we investigated the potential of photogrammetry products derived from imagery acquired with off-the-shelf UAVs in order to provide a low-cost assessment of the risks of permafrost degradation along critical infrastructure. We tested a minimal drone setup without ground control points to derive high-resolution 3D point clouds via structure from motion (SfM) at a site affected by thermal erosion along the Dalton Highway on the North Slope of Alaska. For the sub-meter change analysis, we used a multiscale point cloud comparison which we improved by ...