TY - JOUR

T1 - Standardized monitoring of permafrost thaw

T2 - a user-friendly, multiparameter protocol

AU - Boike, Julia

AU - Chadburn, Sarah E.

AU - Martin, Julia

AU - Zweiback, Simon

AU - Althuizen, Inge H.J.

AU - Anselm, Norbert

AU - Cai, Lei

AU - Coulombe, Stephanie

AU - Lee, Hanna

AU - Liljedahl, Anna

AU - Schneebeli, Martin

AU - Sjöberg, Ylva

AU - Smith, Noah

AU - Smith, Sharon

AU - Streletskiy, Dmitry

AU - Stuenzi, Simone

AU - Westermann, Sebastian

AU - Wilcox, Evan

PY - 2021/7/29

Y1 - 2021/7/29

N2 - Climate change is destabilizing permafrost landscapes, affecting infrastructure, ecosystems and human livelihoods. The rate of permafrost thaw is controlled by surface and subsurface properties and processes, all of which are potentially linked with each other. Yet, no standardized protocol exists for measuring permafrost thaw and related processes and properties in a linked manner. The permafrost thaw action group of the Terrestrial Multidisciplinary distributed Observatories for the Study of the Arctic Connections (T-MOSAiC) project has developed a protocol, for use by non-specialist scientists and technicians, citizen scientists and indigenous groups, to collect standardized metadata and data on permafrost thaw. The protocol introduced here addresses the need to jointly measure permafrost thaw and the associated surface and subsurface environmental conditions. The parameters measured along transects are: snow depth, thaw depth, vegetation height, soil texture, and water level. The metadata collection includes data on timing of data collection, geographical coordinates, land surface characteristics (vegetation, ground surface, water conditions), as well as photographs. Our hope is that this openly available dataset will also be highly valuable for validation and parameterization of numerical and conceptual models, thus to the broad community represented by the T-MOSAIC project.

AB - Climate change is destabilizing permafrost landscapes, affecting infrastructure, ecosystems and human livelihoods. The rate of permafrost thaw is controlled by surface and subsurface properties and processes, all of which are potentially linked with each other. Yet, no standardized protocol exists for measuring permafrost thaw and related processes and properties in a linked manner. The permafrost thaw action group of the Terrestrial Multidisciplinary distributed Observatories for the Study of the Arctic Connections (T-MOSAiC) project has developed a protocol, for use by non-specialist scientists and technicians, citizen scientists and indigenous groups, to collect standardized metadata and data on permafrost thaw. The protocol introduced here addresses the need to jointly measure permafrost thaw and the associated surface and subsurface environmental conditions. The parameters measured along transects are: snow depth, thaw depth, vegetation height, soil texture, and water level. The metadata collection includes data on timing of data collection, geographical coordinates, land surface characteristics (vegetation, ground surface, water conditions), as well as photographs. Our hope is that this openly available dataset will also be highly valuable for validation and parameterization of numerical and conceptual models, thus to the broad community represented by the T-MOSAIC project.

U2 - 10.1139/as-2021-0007

DO - 10.1139/as-2021-0007

M3 - Review

VL - 8

JO - Arctic Science

JF - Arctic Science

SN - 2368-7460

ER -