Baseline characteristics of climate, permafrost and land cover from a new permafrost observatory in the Lena River Delta, Siberia (1998–2011)

摘要

Samoylov Island is centrally located within the Lena River Delta at72° N, 126° E and lies within the Siberian zone ofcontinuous permafrost. The landscape on Samoylov Island consists mainly oflate Holocene river terraces with polygonal tundra, ponds and lakes, and anactive floodplain. The island has been the focus of numerousmultidisciplinary studies since 1993, which have focused on climate, landcover, ecology, hydrology, permafrost and limnology. This paper aims toprovide a framework for future studies by describing the characteristics ofthe island's meteorological parameters (temperature, radiation and snowcover), soil temperature, and soil moisture. The land surface characteristicshave been described using high resolution aerial images in combination withdata from ground-based observations. Of note is that deeper permafrosttemperatures have increased between 0.3 to 1.3 °C over the last fiveyears. However, no clear warming of air and active layer temperatures isdetected since 1998, though winter air temperatures during recent years havenot been as cold as in earlier years.Data related to this article are archived under: href="http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.806233"target="_blank">http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.806233 .