Alaska Peatland Map (2019-2021) ...

• Main Authors: Lara, Mark J., Michaelides, Roger, Anderson, Duncan, Chen, Wenqu, Hall, Emma, Ludden, Caroline, Schore, Aiden, Mishra, Umakant, Scott, Sarah
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: NSF Arctic Data Center 2023
• Subjects: peatlands; organic soil; soil horizon; alaska; carbon; fire; histosols; Arctic; permafrost; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.18739/a2nk3667m; https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/doi:10.18739/A2NK3667M

Peatlands cover 3% of the global land surface, yet store 25% of the world’s soil organic carbon. These organic-rich soils are widespread across permafrost regions, representing nearly 18% of land surface and storing between 500 and 600 petagrams of carbon (PgC). Peat (i.e., partially decomposed thick organic layers) accumulates due to the imbalance between plant production and decomposition often within saturated, nutrient deficient, and acidic soils, which limit decomposition. As warmer and drier conditions become more prevalent across northern ecosystems, the vulnerability of peatland soils may increase with the susceptibility of peat-fire ignitions, yet the distribution of peatlands across Alaska remains uncertain. Here we develop a new high-resolution (20 meter (m) resolution) wall-to-wall ~1.5 million square kilometer (km2) peatland map of Alaska, using a combination of Sentinel-1 (Dual-polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar), Sentinel-2 (Multi-Spectral Imager), and derivatives from the Arctic Digital ...