“…Thermokarst lakes have mainly formed during the course of the Holocene and are a sign of local permafrost degradation following post glacial climate warming [ Rampton , 1988; Romanovskii et al , 2004; Walter et al , 2007]. Thermokarst lakes are abundant surface features across many high latitude regions, such as the Seward Peninsula [ Hopkins , 1949; West and Plug , 2008; Plug and West , 2009], the Arctic Coastal Plain [ Sellmann et al , 1975; Hinkel et al , 2005] as well as several areas in Interior Alaska [ Jorgenson and Osterkamp , 2005]; in Canada on Banks Island [ Harry and French , 1983], Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula [ Mackay , 1988], the Yukon Coastal Plain [ West and Plug , 2008; Plug and West , 2009], and Richards Island [ Burn , 2002], and in large regions of Siberia [ Romanovskii et al , 2004, Tomirdiaro and Ryabchun , 1973; Zimov et al , 1997; Smith et al , 2005; Grosse et al , 2006; Walter et al , 2007; Grosse et al , 2011]. While not all northern, high‐latitude lakes are of thermokarst origin [ Jorgenson and Shur , 2007; Smith et al , 2007], their importance to global climate change and northern high latitude soil and permafrost‐stored carbon cycling has been noted [ Zimov et al , 1997; Walter et al , 2006; Walter et al , 2007].…”