Permafrost and pondt: remote sensing and GIS used to monitor Alaska wetlands at the landscape level

摘要

To address the question of how observed climate warming has affected Alaska's wetlands, graduate student Brian Riordan is using digital images obtained during the past fifty years to study ten sites in three regions of the state--areas with no permafrost, discontinuous permafrost, and continuous permafrost (Figure 1). The study, begun last year, is restricted to closed-basin water bodies having have no direct influx or outflow of stream water. His preliminary results show that in areas of discontinuous permafrost, the area of closed-basin water bodies has significantly decreased during these decades.