Quantifying landscape change in an arctic coastal lowland using repeat airborne LiDAR

Jones, Benjamin M.; Stoker, Jason M.; Gibbs, Ann E.; Grosse, Guido; Romanovsky, V. E.; Douglas, Thomas A.; Kinsman, N.; Richmond, Bruce M.

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/4/045025

Cited by 67 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…White and Wang (2003) and Young and Ashford (2006) used repeat airborne LiDAR data to estimate volumetric erosion and sediment pathways of non-permafrost coasts. Jones et al (2013) demonstrated suitability of airborne LIDAR data for landscape changes of arctic coastal lowlands, including volumetric changes due to coastal erosion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Coastal erosion and mass wasting along the Canadian Beaufort Sea based on annual airborne LiDAR elevation data

et al. 2017

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Erosion of permafrost coasts has received increasing scientific attention since 1990s because of rapid land loss and the mobilisation potential of old organic carbon. The majority of permafrost coastal erosion studies are limited to time periods from a few years to decades. Most of these studies emphasize the spatial variability of coastal erosion, but the intensity of inter-annual variations, including intermediate coastal aggradation, remains poorly documented. We used repeat airborne Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) elevation data from 2012 and 2013 with 1 m horizontal resolution to study coastal erosion and accompanying mass-wasting processes in the hinterland. Study sites were selected to include different morphologies along the coast of the Yukon Coastal Plain and on Herschel Island. We studied elevation and volume changes and coastline movement and compared the results between geomorphic units. Results showed simple uniform coastal erosion from low coasts (up to 10 m height) and a highly diverse erosion pattern along coasts with higher backshore elevation. This variability was particularly pronounced in the case of active retrogressive thaw slumps, which can decrease coastal erosion or even cause temporary progradation by sediment release. Most of the extremes were recorded in study sites with active slumping (e.g. 22 m of coastline retreat and 42 m of coastline progradation). Coastline progradation also resulted from the accumulation of slope collapse material. These occasional events can significantly affect the coastline position on a specific date and can affect coastal retreat rates as estimated in long term by coastline digitalisation from air photos and satellite imagery. These deficiencies can be overcome by short-term airborne LiDAR measurements, which provide detailed and high-resolution information about quickly changing elevations in coastal areas.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Coastal erosion and mass wasting along the Canadian Beaufort Sea based on annual airborne LiDAR elevation data

et al. 2017

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“…Elevation change accuracy was estimated using the approach of Jones et al (2013). Vertical accuracies of the Ikonos-derived and LiDAR DEM data sets were used to calculate the threshold of considered elevation changes:…”

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confidence: 99%

“…This shortcoming is mostly due to the absence of highresolution DEMs for remote polar regions. Recent volumetric erosion studies used stereo-photogrammetrically or LiDAR-derived DEMs (Jones et al 2013;Gü nther et al 2015). Coastal carbon flux calculations were based mainly on the combination of planimetric coastline movement rates and average cliff heights (e.g., Jorgenson & Brown 2005;Ping et al 2011;Gü nther et al 2013) and assumed that coastline retreat correlates with sediment release.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relation between planimetric and volumetric measurements of permafrost coast erosion: a case study from Herschel Island, western Canadian Arctic

et al. 2016

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Ice-rich permafrost coasts often undergo rapid erosion, which results in land loss and release of considerable amounts of sediment, organic carbon and nutrients, impacting the near-shore ecosystems. Because of the lack of volumetric erosion data, Arctic coastal erosion studies typically report on planimetric erosion. Our aim is to explore the relationship between planimetric and volumetric coastal erosion measurements and to update the coastal erosion rates on Herschel Island in the Canadian Arctic. We used high-resolution digital elevation models to compute sediment release and compare volumetric data to planimetric estimations of coastline movements digitized from satellite imagery. Our results show that volumetric erosion is locally less variable and likely corresponds better with environmental forcing than planimetric erosion. Average sediment release volumes are in the same range as sediment release volumes calculated from coastline movements combined with cliff height. However, the differences between these estimates are significant for small coastal sections. We attribute the differences between planimetric and volumetric coastal erosion measurements to mass wasting, which is abundant along the coasts of Herschel Island. The average recorded coastline retreat on Herschel Island was 0.68 m a(1 for the period 2000Á2011. Erosion rates increased by more than 50% in comparison with the period 1970Á2000, which is in accordance with a recently observed increase along the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. The estimated annual sediment release was 28. Arctic coastal erosion rates are among the highest measured in the world despite the fact that the erosional processes are limited to the short ice-free season, which lasts three to four months (Aré 1988;Overduin et al. 2014). Local coastal erosion rates in sites with exposed ice-rich permafrost can exceed 20 m a (1 (Jones et al. 2009;Gü nther et al. 2013;Gü nther et al. 2015). reported an average erosion rate of 0.5 m a (1 for the entire Arctic; 3% of the Arctic coastline is retreating faster than 3 m a (page number not for citation purpose) sea-surface temperatures and a longer open water season that will likely increase erosion rates (Overeem et al. 2011;Stocker et al. 2013;Gü nther et al. 2015).Erosion of permafrost coasts can cause rapid land loss, which can lead to a loss of habitat, natural resources and archaeological sites, and can endanger modern infrastructure and communities (Johnson et al. 2004;Mars & Houseknecht 2007). Jones et al. (2008) used aerial photography to identify cultural and historical sites on the Alaskan Beaufort Sea coast that were threatened or had already been eroded by coastal erosion. According to Mars & Houseknecht (2007), the threat of land loss can be reasonably well resolved based on coastline retreat rate data derived from satellite imagery.Soils and unconsolidated deposits in the northern circumpolar region store large quantities of soil organic carbon (Hugelius et al. 2014). Considerable proportions of this carbon are released to...

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“…More generally, vertical changes are an excellent proxy for the degradation of ice-rich permafrost soils because thawing causes the soils to lose cohesion and reduce in volume, inducing slumping 5 and subsidence (Günther et al, 2015;Jones et al, 2013). Our estimates of topographic changes are obtained from repeated topographic observations using the radar remote sensing technique single-pass interferometry (Bamler and Hartl, 1998).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The ability to cover large areas and to do so frequently are key advantages over both in-situ measurements and the remote sensing techniques photogrammetry and LiDAR (Günther et al, 2015;Jones et al, 2013;Obu et al, 2016). A further advantage is that reliable height measurements can also be made when the soil moisture changes and when the surface structure is disrupted -a common occurrence in rapid mass movements.…”

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Sub-seasonal thaw slump mass wasting is not consistently energy limited at the landscape scale

Zwieback¹,

Kokelj²,

Günther³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Abstract. Predicting future thaw slump activity requires a sound understanding of the atmospheric drivers and geomorphic controls on mass wasting across a range of time scales. On sub-seasonal time scales, sparse measurements indicate that mass wasting at active slumps is often limited by the energy available for melting ground ice, but other factors such as rainfall or the formation of an insulating veneer may also be relevant. To study the sub-seasonal drivers, we derive topographic changes from single-pass radar interferometric data acquired by the TanDEM-X satellite (12 m resolution). The high vertical precision 5 (around 30 cm), frequent observations (11 days) and large coverage (5000 km2) allow us to track volume losses as drivers such as the available energy change during summer in two study regions. We find that thaw slumps in the Tuktoyaktuk coastlands, Canada, are not energy limited in June, as they undergo limited mass wasting (height loss of around 0 cm/day) despite the ample available energy, indicating the widespread presence of an insulating snow or debris veneer. Later in summer, height losses generally increase (around 3 cm/day), but they do so in distinct ways. For many slumps, mass wasting tracks the available 10 energy, a temporal pattern that is also observed at coastal yedoma cliffs on the Bykovsky Peninsula, Russia. However, the other two common temporal trajectories are asynchronous with the available energy, as they track strong precipitation events or show a sudden speed-up in late August, respectively. The observed temporal patterns are poorly related to slump characteristics like the slump area. The contrasting temporal behaviour of nearby thaw slumps highlights the importance of complex local and temporally varying controls on mass wasting.

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Quantifying landscape change in an arctic coastal lowland using repeat airborne LiDAR

Cited by 67 publications

References 37 publications

Coastal erosion and mass wasting along the Canadian Beaufort Sea based on annual airborne LiDAR elevation data

Coastal erosion and mass wasting along the Canadian Beaufort Sea based on annual airborne LiDAR elevation data

Relation between planimetric and volumetric measurements of permafrost coast erosion: a case study from Herschel Island, western Canadian Arctic

Sub-seasonal thaw slump mass wasting is not consistently energy limited at the landscape scale

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