Abrupt changes of thermokarst lakes in Western Siberia: impacts of climatic warming on permafrost melting

Kirpotin, Sergey N.; Polishchuk, Yu. M.; Bryksina, N.

doi:10.1080/00207230902758287

Cited by 35 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…The latter are often developed on the moraine till and crystalline rocks, and present highly irregular shapes (skinny or elongated along the glacier direction). In contrast, due to the homogeneity of the soil substrate in western Siberia (1-3 m thick frozen peat), the thermokarst processes in the peat bog of this region always produce the isomeric (round, and much less common, oval) isolated water bodies [14,31,50,61]. According to our field and topographical map-based measurements across a sizeable latitudinal gradient of western Siberia, the share of lakes having an irregular shape is less than 10% [49,53,54].…”

Section: Remote Sensing Analysismentioning

confidence: 88%

“…This number of pixels is sufficient for the reliable identification of lakes from the background digital noise of the image. According to the works of our group and Bryksina [18,31,41,46,48], the uncertainty of the lake area measurement using remote sensing is a few percent. Note that the thermokarst lakes and thaw ponds of western Siberia are different from the glacial lakes of other boreal and subarctic regions.…”

Section: Remote Sensing Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The small lakes (0.5-2 ha), having essentially frozen peat at the bottom with a high amount of porous organic detritus, were monitored via the manual probing of the water depth, across the lake transect or in the middle of the lake. Based on available field measurements of the depth and surface areas of~150 thermokarst lakes from the sporadic to continuous permafrost zone [14,31,49,50,[52][53][54]61,[72][73][74][75][76][77], the depth was approximated to be equal to 0.54 ± 0.25 m (2 s.d.) for lakes smaller than 2 ha, and 0.85 ± 0.25 m (2 s.d.)…”

Section: Lake Depth and Hydrochemistrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over the past decades, the formation of thermokarst lakes and thaw ponds due to permafrost degradation was documented in Alaska, Canada, Europe, and Siberia [27][28][29][30][31]. The majority of available studies had a rather limited geographic coverage (<10,000 km 2 , [16,32,33]), or described relatively small regions within larger territories [29].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Size Distribution, Surface Coverage, Water, Carbon, and Metal Storage of Thermokarst Lakes in the Permafrost Zone of the Western Siberia Lowland

Polishchuk

Bogdanov²,

Polishchuk

et al. 2017

Water

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Despite the importance of thermokarst (thaw) lakes of the subarctic zone in regulating greenhouse gas exchange with the atmosphere and the flux of metal pollutants and micro-nutrients to the ocean, the inventory of lake distribution and stock of solutes for the permafrost-affected zone are not available. We quantified the abundance of thermokarst lakes in the continuous, discontinuous, and sporadic permafrost zones of the western Siberian Lowland (WSL) using Landsat-8 scenes collected over the summers of 2013 and 2014. In a territory of 105 million ha, the total number of lakes >0.5 ha is 727,700, with a total surface area of 5.97 million ha, yielding an average lake coverage of 5.69% of the territory. Small lakes (0.5-1.0 ha) constitute about one third of the total number of lakes in the permafrost-bearing zone of WSL, yet their surface area does not exceed 2.9% of the total area of lakes in WSL. The latitudinal pattern of lake number and surface coverage follows the local topography and dominant landscape zones. The role of thermokarst lakes in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and most trace element storage in the territory of WSL is non-negligible compared to that of rivers. The annual lake storage across the WSL of DOC, Cd, Pb, Cr, and Al constitutes 16%, 34%, 37%, 57%, and 73%, respectively, of their annual delivery by WSL rivers to the Arctic Ocean from the same territory. However, given that the concentrations of DOC and metals in the smallest lakes (<0.5 ha) are much higher than those in the medium and large lakes, the contribution of small lakes to the overall carbon and metal budget may be comparable to, or greater than, their contribution to the water storage. As such, observations at high spatial resolution (<0.5 ha) are needed to constrain the reservoirs and the mobility of carbon and metals in aquatic systems. To upscale the DOC and metal storage in lakes of the whole subarctic, the remote sensing should be coupled with hydrochemical measurements in aquatic systems of boreal plains.

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Section: Remote Sensing Analysismentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Remote Sensing Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Lake Depth and Hydrochemistrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Size Distribution, Surface Coverage, Water, Carbon, and Metal Storage of Thermokarst Lakes in the Permafrost Zone of the Western Siberia Lowland

Polishchuk

Bogdanov²,

Polishchuk

et al. 2017

Water

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“…On a global perspective, methanotrophs represent a net sink of CH 4 able to consume approximately 20 to 60 Tg of CH 4 per year (King, 1997;Holmes et al, 1999) and thus play a very important role in the regulation of concentrations of methane, one of the major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Hitherto, studies in Greenland and other arctic regions have focused on methane emission due to permafrost melting (Wagner et al, 2005;Liebner and Wagner, 2007;Mastepanov et al, 2008;Kirpotin et al, 2009). To the best of our knowledge this is the first study that examines methane consumption in a recently deglaciated forefield in Greenland.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial Patterns of Soil Development, Methane Oxidation, and Methanotrophic Diversity along a Receding Glacier Forefield, Southeast Greenland

Bárcena

Finster

Yde

2011

Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research

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The coupled moisture‐heat process of permafrost around a thermokarst pond in Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau under global warming

Zhan

Lai

et al. 2014

JGR Earth Surface

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Due to environmental disturbances such as local human activity and global warming, melting of massive ground ice has resulted in thermokarst ponds, which are extensively distributed in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). Besides the global warming, the thermokarst pond, as a major heat source, speeds up the moisture change and degradation of its surrounding permafrost. To analyze the long-term coupled moisture-heat process near a representative nonpenetrative thermokarst pond in a permafrost region, abundant temperature data over multiple years at different depths and horizontal distances from the center of the thermokarst pond have been collected at a field experimental station in QTP. A numerical model is built to analyze this thermokarst pond. The temperature and moisture processes of surrounding permafrost are simulated by this model and compared with measured temperature data. Our results show that if the rate of air temperature rise is 0.048°C/yr, which refers to a 2.4°C temperature rise over 50 years, the thawing fronts underneath the thermokarst pond move downward at a linear rate of 0.18 m/yr and the permafrost beneath the pond center would disappear after the year of 2281. Beyond that time, the impact range of the pond on the natural ground increases to about 50 m in horizontal direction. So a dish-shape thawing zone occurs around the thermokarst pond. Simultaneously, the moisture state is greatly changed in 2281 and becomes completely different from that in 2013. All of these would inevitably deteriorate the ecological and environmental system in QTP.

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Abrupt changes of thermokarst lakes in Western Siberia: impacts of climatic warming on permafrost melting

Cited by 35 publications

References 7 publications

Size Distribution, Surface Coverage, Water, Carbon, and Metal Storage of Thermokarst Lakes in the Permafrost Zone of the Western Siberia Lowland

Size Distribution, Surface Coverage, Water, Carbon, and Metal Storage of Thermokarst Lakes in the Permafrost Zone of the Western Siberia Lowland

Spatial Patterns of Soil Development, Methane Oxidation, and Methanotrophic Diversity along a Receding Glacier Forefield, Southeast Greenland

The coupled moisture‐heat process of permafrost around a thermokarst pond in Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau under global warming

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