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Lowland boreal forest ecosystems in Alaska are dominated by wetlands comprised of a complex mosaic of fens, collapse-scar bogs, low shrub/scrub, and forests growing on elevated ice-rich permafrost soils. Thermokarst has affected the lowlands of the Tanana Flats in central Alaska for centuries, as thawing permafrost collapses forests that transition to wetlands. Located within the discontinuous permafrost zone, this region has significantly warmed over the past half-century, and much of these carbon-rich permafrost soils are now within ~0.5 °C of thawing. Increased permafrost thaw in lowland boreal forests in response to warming may have consequences for the climate system. This study evaluates the trajectories and potential drivers of 60 years of forest change in a landscape subjected to permafrost thaw in unburned dominant forest types (paper birch and black spruce) associated with location on elevated permafrost plateau and across multiple time periods (1949, 1978, 1986, 1998, and 2009) using historical and contemporary aerial and satellite images for change detection. We developed (i) a deterministic statistical model to evaluate the potential climatic controls on forest change using gradient boosting and regression tree analysis, and (ii) a 30 × 30 m land cover map of the Tanana Flats to estimate the potential landscape-level losses of forest area due to thermokarst from 1949 to 2009. Over the 60-year period, we observed a nonlinear loss of birch forests and a relatively continuous gain of spruce forest associated with thermokarst and forest succession, while gradient boosting/regression tree models identify precipitation and forest fragmentation as the primary factors controlling birch and spruce forest change, respectively. Between 1950 and 2009, landscape-level analysis estimates a transition of ~15 km² or ~7% of birch forests to wetlands, where the greatest change followed warm periods. This work highlights that the vulnerability and resilience of lowland ice-rich permafrost ecosystems to climate changes depend on forest type., (© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

People who travel on ice-covered rivers to access traditional lands and resources can be profoundly impacted by effects of climate change on river ice seasonality. We used remote sensing, bolstered by citizen science, to assess trends and geospatial patterns of the ice cover in the Copper River Basin of Southcentral Alaska. Our analysis of Landsat imagery from water years (WYs) 1973 to 2021 suggests a severely diminishing season of river ice travel (delayed or incomplete freezeup, early breakup) due to increasing air temperatures. The weekly probability of an adequate ice cover for river crossings declined by an average of 53 percentage points. Ice extent was closely related to accumulated freezing degree days (AFDD). AFDDOct-Apr decreased by 15% since WY 1943, a significant warming trend. We mapped the spatiotemporal variation of ice and open water extent with multispectral and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery (Sentinel-2, Sentinel-1). We identified reaches with more reliable opportunities for winter access and others susceptible to extensive open water, differences related to flow energy and channel form. The results of this study can support local decision making and adaptation in response to rapidly changing river ice conditions, and our approach can be applied elsewhere to document change and improve travel safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Characterization of permafrost, particularly warm and near-surface permafrost which can contain significant liquid water, is critical to understanding complex interrelationships with climate change, ecosystems, and disturbances such as wildfires. Understanding the vulnerability and resilience of permafrost requires an interdisciplinary approach, relying on (for example) geophysical investigations, ecological characterization, direct observations, remote sensing, and more. As part of a multiyear investigation into the impacts of wildfires on permafrost, we have collected in situ measurements of the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) response of the active layer and permafrost in a variety of soil conditions, types, and saturations. In this paper, we summarize the NMR data and present quantitative relationships between active layer and permafrost liquid water content and pore sizes and show the efficacy of borehole NMR (bNMR) to permafrost studies. Through statistical analyses and synthetic freezing simulations, we also demonstrate that borehole NMR is sensitive to the nucleation of ice within soil pore spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate identification of the relationships between permafrost extent and landscape patterns can help to develop airborne geophysical or remote sensing tools to map permafrost in remote locations or across large areas. These tools will be particularly applicable in discontinuous permafrost where climate warming or disturbances such as human development or fire can lead to rapid permafrost degradation. We have linked field-based geophysical, point-scale, and imagery surveying measurements to map permafrost at five fire scars (1930, 1975, 1988, 2001, and 2010) on the Tanana Flats in central Alaska. Ground-based elevation surveys, seasonal thaw-depth profiles, and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) measurements were combined with airborne imagery and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) to identify relationships between permafrost geomorphology and elapsed time since fire disturbance. ERT proved to be a robust technique for mapping the presence or absence of permafrost because of the marked difference in resistivity values for frozen versus unfrozen material. There was no clear relationship between elapsed time since fire and permafrost extent at our sites. However, we have found that the transition zone boundaries between permafrost soils and unfrozen soils in the collapse-scar bogs at our sites had complex and unpredictable morphologies. This result suggested that attempts to quantify the presence or absence of permafrost using aerial measurements alone could lead to incomplete results. Taken in total, the results from our study indicated that although ground-based ERT measurements were the most rapid means of mapping permafrost, we were still limited in being able to apply airborne surveying measurements at the landscape scale toward accurately estimating permafrost extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]