Changes in surface water dynamics across northwestern Canada are influenced by wildfire and permafrost thaw
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15550247 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hana Travers-Smith (0000-0002-9338-0633, University of Victoria, corresponding author), T C Lantz (0000-0001-5643-1537, EarthSky), Robert Fraser (0000-0002-1475-1863, EarthSky), R H Fraser, Steven V Kokelj (0000-0002-2840-2605, EarthSky) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 11 |
| Pages | 114021-114021 |
| Publication date | 2022-10-06 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Research Letters (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326 |
| Publisher | IOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1088/1748-9326/ac97f7 |
| OpenAlex | W4302759895 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 66 |
The abundance and distribution of surface water at high latitudes is shifting rapidly in response to both climate change and permafrost thaw. In particular, the expansion and drainage of lakes and ponds is widespread but spatially variable, and more research is needed to understand factors driving these processes. In this study we used medium resolution (30 m) remote sensing data to analyse changes in lake area in permafrost-rich lowland regions across northwestern Canada. First, we used the Global Surface Water Dataset developed by the GLAD research group to map the absolute area of different land–water transitions across a 1.4 million km 2 study domain. Next, we selected six regional study areas representing a range of climatic, geologic and hydrologic conditions. Within these regional study areas, we used the Landsat satellite archive to map annual trends in the area of 27 755 lakes between 1985 and 2020. We trained a random forests model to classify lakes exhibiting significant increasing or decreasing trends in area, and assessed the relative importance of climate, disturbance and environmental variables in determining the direction of change. Our analysis shows that significant increases in lake area were 5.6 times more frequent than decreases during the study period. Wildfire and ground ice abundance were the most important predictors of the direction of change. Greater ground ice content was associated with regions that experienced increases in lake area, while wildfire was associated with regions that experienced decreases in lake area. The effects of climate, including trends in mean annual temperature and total annual precipitation were smaller than disturbance and environmental factors, indicating that climate has likely had indirect effects on lake area changes over our period of study
Climate change · Climatology · Geography · Hydrology (agriculture · Latitude · Permafrost · Physical geography · Range (aeronautics · Arctic and Antarctic ice dynamics · Climate change and permafrost · Cryospheric studies and observations · Environmental Science · Geology · Oceanography
Permafrost is warming at a global scale
Disappearing Arctic Lakes
PDP
Random Forests
Contemporary (1951–2001) Evolution of Lakes in the Old Crow Basin, Northern Yukon, Canada
The sign, magnitude and potential drivers of change in surface water extent in Canadian tundra
Recent warming reverses forty-year decline in catastrophic lake drainage and hastens gradual lake drainage across northern Alaska
Acceleration of thaw slump activity in glaciated landscapes of the Western Canadian Arctic
Edaphic and microclimatic controls over permafrost response to fire in interior Alaska
The Changing Face of Arctic Snow Cover
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |