Summit Lake in central Alaska is fed by the Gulcana Glacier, which can be seen in the background. Credit: Eric Levenson
As climate change warms the Arctic, permafrost is thawed and carbon trapped in the soil is transporting into the atmosphere. Permafrost stores twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, but the extent to which this frozen carbon thaws and accelerates climate change remains a key point for scientific research. Taking measurements of permafrost that are spreading on the ground is not logistically feasible in the far north.
By documenting Alaska’s lakes and ponds in unprecedented detail, Levenson and his colleagues show where and how the waters can be informed of the melting of the underlying permafrost, and maintain a tab on Arctic changes. Take a step towards a simple and easy-to-applicable way to do this. This research has been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Thawing permafrost can shift erosion rates, vegetation growth, and soil permeability, forming, growing and draining lakes. To investigate how the relationship between the lake area and the extent of intact permafrost changes across Alaska, researchers used images taken almost daily at a 10-meter resolution by Sentinel 2 satellites. , identified and tracked changes in more than 800,000 water bodies. state.
They report that bedrock appears to reduce the size of lakes in landscapes where they are not exposed to surfaces of glaciers. Conversely, in areas that have recently been carved by moving glaciers, lake areas can increase as permafrost thawing. In some cases, there is no clear relationship between the two.
Retreating glaciers usually leave new lakes behind. However, the formation of these lakes can be delayed until permafrost thaws or new tremors form. The rugged topography and less permeable sediments of glacial landscapes can also explain why lakes in glaciers and glaciers-free regions respond differently to permafrost thawing, researchers say Masu.
The authors did not first consider the relationship between lake area and permafrost melting, but the first to explain how lake responses to ongoing melting depend on geological history. is. The researchers have reported that the dataset they generated is called the Alaska Lake and Pond Generation Dataset, which aims to investigate how permafrost changes as the Arctic Circle warms. It is said to be significantly simplified.
More details: Eric S. Levenson et al., Glacier History Modifies Permafrost Controls on Lake and Pond Distribution, Geophysical Research (2025). doi: 10.1029/2024GL112771
The story has been reissued courtesy of EOS, hosted by the American Geophysics Union. Read the original story here.
Quote: Alaska lakes and ponds recovered from February 19, 2025 from https://phys.org/news/2025-02-Alaska-lakes-ponds-reveal-effects.htmlg on February 19, 2025 We will clarify the effects of thawing permafrost (February 19, 2025).
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