For the fourth consecutive year, ground-based measurements of the dynamic, permafrost-underlain tundra landscape have been continued in Trail Valley (68°44’25” N 133°29’36” W). A team of permafrost researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) for Polar and Marine Research around PD Dr. Julia Boike conducted the measurements as part of a large expedition to the Canadian Northwest Territories. Get more information on the team and their work, as well as insights on the Arctic research expedition in these exciting blog posts.
To observe the phenomenon of thaw subsidence at the Trail Valley research site, thaw depth and ground surface displacement relative to poles fixed in the ground are measured at the beginning (June) and end (August) of thawing seasons since 2015. Find further information in the descriptions of the PermaSAR field campaigns in June 2015, August 2015, and August 2016. The measurements are published together with TLS and GNSS data of the respective plot sites in a powerful multitemporal dataset:
Anders, K., Antonova, S., Beck, I., Boike, J., Höfle, B., Langer, M., Marsh, P., Marx, S., (2018): Multisensor ground-based measurements of the permafrost thaw subsidence in the Trail Valley Creek, NWT, Canada, 2015-2016. Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, PANGAEA, DOI: 10.1594/PANGAEA.888566.