Linking repeat lidar with Landsat products for large scale quantification of fire-induced permafrost thaw settlement in interior Alaska
The permafrost–fire–climate system has been a hotspot in research for decades under a warming climate scenario. Surface vegetation plays a dominant role in protecting permafrost from summer warmth, thus, any alteration of vegetation structure, particularly following severe wildfires, can cause drama...
Published in: | Environmental Research Letters |
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Main Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
IOP Publishing
2023
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acabd6 https://doaj.org/article/e8590ec80e254b88bfe19e965fe6da16 |
Summary: | The permafrost–fire–climate system has been a hotspot in research for decades under a warming climate scenario. Surface vegetation plays a dominant role in protecting permafrost from summer warmth, thus, any alteration of vegetation structure, particularly following severe wildfires, can cause dramatic top–down thaw. A challenge in understanding this is to quantify fire-induced thaw settlement at large scales (>1000 km ^2 ). In this study, we explored the potential of using Landsat products for a large-scale estimation of fire-induced thaw settlement across a well-studied area representative of ice-rich lowland permafrost in interior Alaska. Six large fires have affected ∼1250 km ^2 of the area since 2000. We first identified the linkage of fires, burn severity, and land cover response, and then developed an object-based machine learning ensemble approach to estimate fire-induced thaw settlement by relating airborne repeat lidar data to Landsat products. The model delineated thaw settlement patterns across the six fire scars and explained ∼65% of the variance in lidar-detected elevation change. Our results indicate a combined application of airborne repeat lidar and Landsat products is a valuable tool for large scale quantification of fire-induced thaw settlement. |
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