A dataset of thermokarst lake drainage events in northern Alaska (2000-2020)

• Main Authors: Chen, Yating, Liu, Aobo, Cheng, Xiao
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2021
• Subjects: Permafrost; Thermokarst lake; Lake drainage; LandTrendr; Remote sensing; Arctic; permafrost; Thermokarst; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4925129; https://zenodo.org/record/4925129

The catastrophic thermokarst lake drainage events occurring in the circumpolar Arctic permafrost region are referred to as the new Arctic hazard. To accurately detect this disturbance process, the authors performed a time series analysis of changes in the thermokarst lake region of northern Alaska since 2000 using all available Landsat TM, ETM+, and OLI continuous data on the Google Earth Engine platform. A trend analysis approach combining LandTrendr and Theil–Sen algorithms was implemented for dynamic monitoring of thermokarst lakes to produce a dataset of thermokarst lake drainage events in northern Alaska (2000-2020). This dataset includes 359 thermokarst lake drainage events detected in northern Alaska during 2000-2020 and year-by-year water distribution maps based on AWEI. The thermokarst lake drainage events are published in Shapefile format, including information on the area, location, drainage proportion, and year of drainage for each drained lake. The water distribution maps are stored in TIFF image format with a spatial resolution of 30 meters.