Spatial and Temporal Influences of Thermokarst Failures on
Surface Processes in Arctic Landscapes
Recent summaries of international research clearly document the past and
future extent of climate warming in the Arctic. These summaries suggest that in
the future, rising temperatures will be accompanied by increased precipitation,
mostly as rain: 20% more over the Arctic as a whole and up to 30% more in
coastal areas during the winter and autumn. These climate changes will have
important impacts on Arctic Systems. Of direct interest to the research we
propose here is the likelihood that warming will promote permafrost degradation
and thaw. Formerly frozen soils may be further destabilized by increased
precipitation, leading to hillslope thermokarst failures. We have recently
documented that thermokarst failures are abundant and appear to have become more
numerous around Toolik Lake on the eastern North Slope and in the western Noatak
River basin in Alaska. We hypothesize that a widespread and long-term increase
in the incidence of thermokarst failures will have important impacts on the
structure and function of arctic headwater landscapes. We propose to use a
systems approach to address hypotheses about how thermokarst failures influence
the structure and function of the arctic landscape. Specifically we will focus
on the composition of vegetation, the distribution and processing of soil
nutrients, and exports of sediments and nutrients to stream and lake ecosystems.
We further propose to link results obtained at this hillslope scale to patterns
observed at the landscape scale to test hypotheses about the spatial
distribution of thermokarst failures in the arctic foothills. We contend that it
is important to understand these interactions because perhaps the greatest
potential impacts of changing land surface processes and formation of
thermokarst failures are feedbacks to the climate system through energy, albedo,
water, and trace gas exchange. This proposal addresses the core mission of the
ARCSS program to take an integrated, synthetic, and interdisciplinary approach
to understanding the Arctic System. The proposed research is designed to
quantify linkages among climatology, hillslope hydrology, geomorphology,
geocryology, community ecology of vegetation, soil nutrient dynamics, microbial
ecology, trace gas dynamics, and aquatic ecology. We will use a combination of
field experimentation, remote sensing, and simulation modeling as a means to
quantify these relationships. We propose to work with native communities to
determine the linkages between relatively recent observations based on technical
data and local knowledge based on community experience, and to correlate the
rate of thermokarst occurrence with long-term climate oscillations and indices.
Finally, we will integrate this research with other ARCSS and international
programs, and will disseminate the results from this research widely through
collaborations with the International Arctic Research Commission and other
groups.
Broader Impacts: Evidence of climate change is becoming widespread, but nowhere
is this evidence stronger than in the Arctic. While many universities and colleges
offer courses in science, engineering, and policy that are relevant to problems
associated with changing climate in the Arctic, there are few examples of education
and career training opportunities that are explicitly focused on this subject. There
are even fewer opportunities for people in remote rural or economically depressed
areas – such as the Native communities in the Arctic that are most directly affected
by climate change – who often do not have direct access to universities, but do have
access to communication tools on the internet. Other potentially interested
communities include primary and secondary school educators who want to learn about
climate change to enhance their teaching and who may need credits for continuing
education or science specialty certification, as well as environmental and public
interest organizations that could use this information in furthering their missions.
We plan to reach geographically isolated and underserved students and adults in
Alaska Native communities and will develop an online course and knowledge base that
will be freely available to the public. We will integrate the findings from this
research on thermokarsts within the broader context of climate change in the Arctic
and include Native observations. Multimedia information will be integrated through
web delivery to address different audiences: advanced high-school students, early
university students and K-12 teachers; the lay public, and remote arctic communities
that are directly affected by climate change impacts. The project will provide
direct training and career development opportunities for 10 graduate students and
post-doctoral fellows as well as numerous undergraduate students. We will
collaborate with the Association of Early Polar Career Scientists (APECS) and the
Young Researchers Network at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks on this. We will
work with the University of the Arctic, Tribal Natural Resources Education Program,
and GLOBE to enhance climate change education for different student audiences.
For more information see:
Spatial and Temporal
Influences of Thermokarst Failures
Polar Field Services Field Notes
This material on this web site is based upon work
supported by the National Science Foundation
Arctic System Sciences Program, Collaborative Awards
ARC-.0806341, 0806399, 0806329, 0806254,
0806465, 0806451, 0806271, and 0806394
