Land cover classification for Kytalyk / Chokurdakh, Indigirka Lowland , Sakha (Yakutia), Russia

• Main Authors: Siewert, Matthias Benjamin, Hugelius, Gustaf
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2018
• Subjects: Changing Permafrost in the Arctic and its Global Effects in the 21st Century; KYT; Kytalyk; Indigirka lowlands; Siberia; MULT; Multiple investigations; PAGE21; Climate change; permafrost; Sakha; Thermokarst; Yakutia
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.896769; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.896769

Permafrost‐affected ecosystems are important components in the global carbon (C) cycle that, despite being vulnerable to disturbances under climate change, remain poorly understood. This dataset provides high-resolution land cover data for the Kytalyk / Chokurdakh study area located at the Berelekh River in the Indigirka lowlands, eastern Siberia, Russia. The land cover classification was constructed from very high spatial resolution (2 m) GeoEye-1 (DigitalGlobe, 19 August 2010) satellite imagery. It was used to map soil organic carbon (SOC) and vegetation biomass over an area dominated by a floodplain and thermokarst basins (Alas). We argue that vegetation dynamics and biomass accumulation are unlikely to offset mineralization of thawed permafrost C and that landscape‐scale reworking of SOC represents the largest potential changes to C cycling.