Disappearing Arctic tundra ponds: Fine‐scale analysis of surface hydrology in drained thaw lake basins over a 65 year period (1948–2013)

Abstract

Long-term fine-scale dynamics of surface hydrology in Arctic tundra ponds (less than 1 ha) are largely unknown; however, these small water bodies may contribute substantially to carbon fluxes, energy balance, and biodiversity in the Arctic system. Change in pond area and abundance across the upper Barrow Peninsula, Alaska, was assessed by comparing historic aerial imagery (1948) and modern submeter resolution satellite imagery (2002, 2008, and 2010). This was complemented by photogrammetric analysis of low-altitude kite-borne imagery in combination with field observations (2010-2013) of pond water and thaw depth transects in seven ponds of the International Biological Program historic research site. Over 2800 ponds in 22 drained thaw lake basins (DTLB) with different geological ages were analyzed. We observed a net decrease of 30.3% in area and 17.1% in number of ponds over the 62 year period. The inclusion of field observations of pond areas in 1972 from a historic research site confirms the linear downward trend in area. Pond area and number were dependent on the age of DTLB; however, changes through time were independent of DTLB age, with potential long-term implications for the hypothesized geomorphologic landscape succession of the thaw lake cycle. These losses were coincident with increases in air temperature, active layer, and density and cover of aquatic emergent plants in ponds. Increased evaporation due to warmer and longer summers, permafrost degradation, and transpiration from encroaching aquatic emergent macrophytes are likely the factors contributing to the decline in surface area and number of ponds.

Mapping Arctic Tundra Vegetation Communities Using Field Spectroscopy and Multispectral Satellite Data in North Alaska, USA

“…Even if the communities are not stable [88,90], the growth rate is so slow that it still makes the study applicable across a short time span like the difference in data collection dates at Ivotuk. Potential expansion of wet sedge meadow communities could occur with further permafrost thaw with areas becoming wetter [91,92] over a decadal time scale [93], but we believe the vegetation maps created within this study were likely not majorly affected by the temporal variation across these sites, making them applicable for using within carbon cycle prediction models. Given the substantial cloud cover of these arctic ecosystems, previous studies (including Langford et al [47] have used imagery and ground truthing data collected in different years.…”

PeRL: a circum-Arctic Permafrost Region Pond and Lake database

“…Mean annual temperature ranges from 0 to −20 • C, and average annual precipitation ranges from 97 to 650 mm (Table 1). (Andresen and Lougheed, 2015), on the Grande Rivière de la Baleine Plateau (Bouchard et al, 2014) and in the Hudson Bay Lowlands in Canada, in Lapland in Sweden, and in the Usa River basin in Russia (Hugelius et al, 2011;Sannel and Kuhry, 2011). Ponds contributed about 45-99 % of the total number of waterbodies, with a mean of 85 ± 14 %, and up to 34 % to the total water surface area, with a mean of 12 ± 8.3 % ( Fig.…”

“…Ground surveys of waterbody surface area were available for only a few study sites. Accuracy ranged between 89 % for object-oriented mapping of multispectral imagery (Lara et al, 2015), 93 % for object-oriented mapping of panchromatic imagery (Andresen and Lougheed, 2015), and more than 95 % for a supervised maximum-likelihood classification of multispectral aerial images (Muster et al, 2012). Errors in the classification may be largely due to commission errors: i.e., the spectral signal is misinterpreted as water where in reality it may be land surface.…”

“…They have been identified as a large source of carbon fluxes compared to the surrounding terrestrial environment (Rautio et al, 2011;Laurion et al, 2010;Abnizova et al, 2012;Langer et al, 2015;Wik et al, 2016;Bouchard et al, 2015). Due to their small surface areas and shallow depths, ponds are especially prone to change; various studies reported ponds drying out or increasing in abundance due to new thermokarst or the drainage of large lakes (Jones et al, 2011;Andresen and Lougheed, 2015;Liljedahl et al, 2016). Such changes in surface inundation may significantly alter regional water, energy, and carbon fluxes (Watts et al, 2014;Lara et al, 2015).…”

Landsat-Based Trend Analysis of Lake Dynamics across Northern Permafrost Regions

“…2017, 9, 640 3 of 28 typically spanned several decades, since the availability of aerial or space-borne imagery at higher temporal frequency in sufficient spatial resolution was not available until recent years. With high spatial resolution images (<5 m) waterbodies can be accurately delineated even to very small sizes (<100 m 2 ; [40,41]). However, due to the limited extent and availability of very high resolution imagery, the studies were usually focused on rather small, image-footprint limited regions [40][41][42][43].…”