Maps of Thermokarst Pool Expansion at 27 Arctic Survey Areas

• Main Authors: Abolt, Charles, Atchley, Adam, Harp, Dylan, Rumpca, Collin
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: 54 Environmental Sciences; Arctic; Barrow; Nome; north slope; permafrost; Seward Peninsula; Thermokarst; Tundra; Alaska; Siberia
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1834773; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1834773; https://doi.org/10.5440/1834773

This repository includes data and code to accompany the manuscript 'Topography drives variability in circumpolar permafrost thaw pond expansion' by Abolt et al. The data include satellite imagery and derived maps of thermokarst pools from twenty-seven survey areas in North America and Siberia. The code, written in MATLAB (R2021a), contains demonstrations of the workflow for generating the maps. The demonstrations include training a generalized UNet for mapping thermokarst pools using data from three survey areas, 'fine tuning' the UNet for use at a specific survey area using transfer learning, applying a trained UNet to infer thermokarst pool extent within satellite imagery, and performing histogram matching as a pre-processing step to improve satellite imagery contrast. The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments: Arctic (NGEE Arctic) was a research effort to reduce uncertainty in Earth System Models by developing a predictive understanding of carbon-rich Arctic ecosystems and feedbacks to climate. NGEE Arctic was supported by the Department of Energy?s Office of Biological and Environmental Research. The NGEE Arctic project had two field research sites: 1) located within the Arctic polygonal tundra coastal region on the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) and the North Slope near Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska and 2) multiple areas on the discontinuous permafrost region of the Seward Peninsula north of Nome, Alaska. Through observations, experiments, and synthesis with existing datasets, NGEE Arctic provided an enhanced knowledge base for multi-scale modeling and contributed to improved process representation at global pan-Arctic scales within the Department of Energy?s Earth system Model (the Energy Exascale Earth System Model, or E3SM), and specifically within the E3SM Land Model component (ELM).