The potential of Citizen Science for mapping landscape change in Arctic permafrost regions

• Main Authors: Fritz, Oliver, Marx, Sabrina, Herfort, Benjamin, Kaiser, Soraya, Langer, Moritz, Lenz, Josefine, Thiel, Christian, Zipf, Alexander
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Herbert Wichmann Verlag, VDE VERLAG GMBH, Berlin/Offenbach 2022
• Subjects: Datengewinnung und -mobilisierung; Arctic; Climate change; permafrost
• Online Access: https://elib.dlr.de/186743/

Monitoring permafrost thaw in the Arctic is essential for assessing global climate change impact. Citizen science approaches can make a crucial contribution to this. In a case study using a micro-mapping methodology, visitors of an exhibition mapped polygonal soil patterns in satellite images of the Arctic. The evaluation of the collected data reveals that mapping such patterns poses a bigger challenge than more established task types, such as building detection. A simplification of the task using a binary detection approach increases the data quality of permafrost mapping. Citizen science shows great potential for permafrost research, although methods must be further tested.