COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Patterns, Dynamics, and Vulnerability of Arctic Polygonal Ecosystems: From Ice-Wedge Polygon to Pan-Arctic Landscapes

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The warming Arctic is reshaping the tundra landscape as ground-ice that is thousands of years old thaws, resulting in differential ground settlement that alters the distribution of water and snow in a region with desert-like precipitation. Field measurements across the Arctic have documented long-term and gradual warming of permafrost and recently the observations have also included rapid ice-wedge degradation in response to a single and unusually warm summer. The goal of this project is to understand the complex and interlinked processes responsible for the evolution of the pan-Arctic ice-wedge polygon tundra landscape by combining field measurements from nine Canadian, Russian, and Alaskan field sites, numerical modeling, and very high spatial resolution optical imagery that has recently become available for the entire Arctic tundra domain. A combination of detailed imagery and advanced processing algorithms will allow pan-Arctic mapping of ice-wedge polygon extent and types (low- and high-centered). A map of that extent and detail does not yet exisxt, but is necessary to link carbon, water, and energy processes occurring at the ice-wedge polygon scale to the larger Arctic land-ocean-atmosphere system. Currently, permafrost thaw and subsequent carbon release is, at best, described in global models via gradual increases in active layer thickness, while field observations clearly show additional dramatic changes to the tundra ecosystem due to rapid differential ground subsidence as ice-wedges melt. A low-centered polygon landscape, which evolved over several thousand years via the slow process of ice-wedge growth, can harbor a sea of shallow ponds throughout the summer that supports a myriad of migratory birds during the breeding season. In just two years, the scene could change dramatically with exposed dry mounds where the shallow water bodies once were, while the surface water area can shrink into narrow elongated beads of deeper ponds above the melted ice-wedges. A complicated set of sub-polygon to watershed scale responses will determine the fate of the landscape. These mechanisms, part of the soil-vegetation-water continuum, will be defined via a numerical biogeophysical model informed by field measurements and repeat imagery of ice-wedge evolution. The new knowledge will support the research community in refining the role of the Arctic in the global climate system. Broader impacts of this project include training of the new generation of Arctic researchers by supporting a graduate student, a post-doctoral fellow, and an early-career scientist. Fairbanks, Alaska, the base for several of the investigators, offers an excellent opportunity to show K-12 students the results of ice-wedge degradation. The products, such as the maps of ice-wedge polygon types and the projected transformation of the vegetation, water, and topography, are at spatial and temporal scales that are relevant to managers. Digital maps of ice-wedge polygon type and ground-ice estimates will be given to state and federal agencies operating in Alaska in a half-day workshop along with ice-wedge polygon ecosystem projections. The information could inform management decisions about habitat protection, or surface-water dependent oil and gas exploration activities. There will also be support for field travel for a journalist and a photographer.