The resilience and vulnerability of permafrost to climate change depends on complex interactions among topography, water, soil, vegetation, and snow, which allow permafrost to persist at mean annual air temperatures (MAATs) as high as +2 °C and degrade at MAATs as low as –20 °C. To assess these interactions, we compiled existing data and tested effects of varying conditions on mean annual surface temperatures (MASTs) and 2 m deep temperatures (MADTs) through modeling. Surface water had the largest effect, with water sediment temperatures being ~10 °C above MAAT. A 50% reduction in snow depth reduces MADT by 2 °C. Elevation changes between 200 and 800 m increases MAAT by up to 2.3 °C and snow depths by ~40%. Aspect caused only a ~1 °C difference in MAST. Covarying vegetation structure, organic matter thickness, soil moisture, and snow depth of terrestrial ecosystems, ranging from barren silt to white spruce ( Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) forest to tussock shrub, affect MASTs by ~6 °C and MADTs by ~7 °C. Groundwater at 2–7 °C greatly affects lateral and internal permafrost thawing. Analyses show that vegetation succession provides strong negative feedbacks that make permafrost resilient to even large increases in air temperatures. Surface water, which is affected by topography and ground ice, provides even stronger negative feedbacks that make permafrost vulnerable to thawing even under cold temperatures.

The diversity of ecosystems across boreal landscapes, successional changes after disturbance and complicated permafrost histories, present enormous challenges for assessing how vegetation, water and soil carbon may respond to climate change in boreal regions. To address this complexity, we used a chronosequence approach to assess changes in vegetation composition, water storage and soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks along successional gradients within four landscapes: (1) rocky uplands on ice-poor hillside colluvium, (2) silty uplands on extremely ice-rich loess, (3) gravelly-sandy lowlands on ice-poor eolian sand and (4) peaty-silty lowlands on thick ice-rich peat deposits over reworked lowland loess. In rocky uplands, after fire permafrost thawed rapidly due to low ice contents, soils became well drained and SOC stocks decreased slightly. In silty uplands, after fire permafrost persisted, soils remained saturated and SOC decreased slightly. In gravelly-sandy lowlands where permafrost persisted in drier forest soils, loss of deeper permafrost around lakes has allowed recent widespread drainage of lakes that has exposed limnic material with high SOC to aerobic decomposition. In peaty-silty lowlands, 2-4 m of thaw settlement led to fragmented drainage patterns in isolated thermokarst bogs and flooding of soils, and surface soils accumulated new bog peat. We were not able to detect SOC changes in deeper soils, however, due to high variability. Complicated soil stratigraphy revealed that permafrost has repeatedly aggraded and degraded in all landscapes during the Holocene, although in silty uplands only the upper permafrost was affected. Overall, permafrost thaw has led to the reorganization of vegetation, water storage and flow paths, and patterns of SOC accumulation. However, changes have occurred over different timescales among landscapes: over decades in rocky uplands and gravelly-sandy lowlands in response to fire and lake drainage, over decades to centuries in Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. 1 1748-9326/13/035017+13$33.00 c 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK Environ. Res. Lett. 8 (2013) 035017 M Torre Jorgenson et al peaty-silty lowlands with a legacy of complicated Holocene changes, and over centuries in silty uplands where ice-rich soil and ecological recovery protect permafrost.

[1] Carbon, nitrogen, and material fluxes were quantified at 48 sampling locations along the 1957 km coastline of the Beaufort Sea, Alaska. Landform characteristics, soil stratigraphy, cryogenic features, and ice contents were determined for each site. Erosion rates for the sites were quantified using satellite images and aerial photos, and the rates averaged across the coastline increased from 0.6 m yr −1 during circa 1950-1980 to 1.2 m yr −1 during circa 1980-2000. Soils were highly cryoturbated, and organic carbon (OC) stores ranged from 13 to 162 kg OC m −2 in banks above sea level and averaged 63 kg OC m −2 over the entire coastline. Long-term (1950Long-term ( -2000 annual lateral fluxes due to erosion were estimated at −153 Gg OC, −7762 Mg total nitrogen, −2106 Tg solids, and −2762 Tg water. Total land area loss along the Alaska Beaufort Sea coastline was estimated at 203 ha yr −1. We found coastal erosion rates, bank heights, soil properties, and material stores and fluxes to be extremely variable among sampling sites. In comparing two classification systems used to classifying coastline types from an oceanographic, coastal morphology perspective and geomorphic units from a terrestrial, soils perspective, we found both systems were effective at differentiating significant differences among classes for most material stores, but the coastline classification did not find significant differences in erosion rates because it lacked differentiation of soil texture.

1. Introduction 2. Study area 3. Methods 3.1. Soils characterization and evaluation of ground ice volume 3.2. Evaluation of rates of erosion 26 3.3. Estimation of volume of eroded soil and organic carbon 27 4. Results and discussion 28 4.1. Yedoma soils and ground ice 4.2. Processes and stages of riverbank erosion 4.2.1. Stage 1: Thermal erosion combined with thermal denudation 31 4.2.2. Stage 2: Thermal denudation 4.2.3. Stage 3: Slope stabilization 33 4.3 Short-and long-term erosion rates 4.3.1. Rates of riverbank retreat at site 1 4.3.2. Rates of riverbank retreat at sites 2 and 3 4.4. Amount of eroded material