A closeup of a tundra peat bog over permafrost near Unalakleet in Western Alaska. Sphagnum and tiny sundew.

In her new paper, Tabea uses computer vision and graph analysis on high-resolution airborne lidar DEMs of fire-affected areas in Western Alaska to investigate the post-fire development of microtopography and surface hydrology in ice-wedge polygon landscapes. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

The #PeTCaT team includes researchers from UAF, UofA, UHH, VUA, SU, WARC, ARI, and NTGS with expertise in permafrost, soil carbon, carbon fluxes, greenhouse gases, limnology, ground ice, plant-soil interactions, spatial analysis, remote sensing, deep learning, and process and Earth system modelling.

A very successful Perma-X campaign is ending now and both the Polar-5 and the team left Inuvik. We are looking forward to analyze a mountain of >30 TB of new data collected to better understand how fast #permafrost thaws and subsides, coasts erode, and lakes and vegetation change. @awi.de

The vastness of the Mackenzie Delta is impressive. A beautiful landscape formed by one of the largest Arctic rivers, affected by #permafrost, shifting delta channels, lakes, ice, and a harsh Arctic climate right at the land-ocean interface. An ecosystem ranging from tundra to boreal forest.

Now surveying thawing #permafrost landscapes of the Mackenzie Delta region, home of the #Inuvialuit and #Gwich’in people, during the Perma-X 2025 airborne campaign based out of #Inuvik in #Canada. Our platform #AWI Polar-5 is a refitted DC-3 BT67 equipped with high res cameras and lidar sensors.

Concluded our West Alaska #permafrost studies for 2025. Had a great time in #Kotzebue with a strong AWI-UAF team, fantastic local partners, and mostly nice weather for boating, ATV travel, and tundra hiking. Studied lake drainage, hydrochemistry, erosion, subsidence, vegetation, & paleo-permafrost.

First week of #permafrost work in #Kotzebue on the Baldwin Peninsula is completed with surveys and sampling of the impressive Cape Blossom, a large hillslope drainage gully east of Kotzebue, and the drained thermokarst lake basin at the Schaeffer family home. Several more days to come…

On our way to #Alaska 🛫💫 for fieldwork around Kotzebue on the Baldwin Peninsula 🇺🇸, a region strongly affected by permafrost thaw as seen in the ALEX portal alex.awi.de. At the same time, our Perma-X #permafrost airborne campaign with #AWI Polar-5 will start in #Inuvik in Northwestern Canada 🇨🇦 🍁

Yes, I believe it is bigger in total area than the Batagay mega thaw slump in NE Siberia’s continuous #permafrost region. This is how Batagay looks like: alex.awi.de?lat=67.58462...

Our Arctic Landscape EXplorer (ALEX) tool nicely shows one of the largest retrogressive thaw slumps on Earth - this impressive rapid #permafrost thaw feature is located on Banks Island: alex.awi.de?lat=73.07764...

Mining in #permafrost regions can be detected with 20 year #Landsat multispectral change trends in our #Arctic Landscape EXplorer (ALEX). Example: Fort Knox Goldmine in nteriir Alaska: alex.awi.de?lat=65.00085...

Here a few snapshots from our Arctic Landscape EXplorer ALEX tool (alex.awi.de/en/).

Thermokarst lakes are deepening and expanding faster if their underlying thaw zone taps into saline permafrost such as marine sediments. This may substantially accelerate permafrost thaw in many Arctic coastal lowlands. New paper in GRL by Jones et al: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

New paper by our PhD student Torben just came out in Boreal Environment Research on the ecosystem effects of reindeer grazing on soil carbon storage in northern Finland. Nice collaborative effort on herbivore effects on soils in cold regions: www.borenv.net/BER/archive/...