Publication Date:
2020-11-26
Description:
Arctic permafrost coasts are major carbon (Schuur et al., 2015) and mercury pools (Schuster et al.,
2018). They represent about 34% of the Earth’s coastline, with long sections affected by high
erosion rates (Fritz et al, 2017), increasingly threatening coastal communities. Year-round reduction
in Arctic sea ice is forecasted and by the end of the 21st century, models indicate a decrease in sea
ice area from 43 to 94% in September and from 8 to 34% in February (IPCC, 2014). An increase of
the sea-ice free season leads to a longer exposure of coasts to wave action. Further, climate
warming is also expected to modify the contribution of terrestrial erosion (Fritz et al., 2015, Ramage
et al., 2018, Irrgang et al., 2018). Within the project EU Horizon2020 project NUNATARYUK, we are
updating the mapping of the Arctic coast, with the Canadian Beaufort coast as a case-study. The
surveying methodology includes: i. a high resolution update of the coastline mapping and change
rates using Pleiades (CNES) satellite acquisitions from 2018, ii. a survey using RTK-UAV aerial
imagery of long-term monitoring sites from the Canada-US border to King Point, and iii. the
experimental use of TerraSAR-X staring spotlight scenes at key sites to monitor intraseasonal
dynamics of cliff edge retreat.
This research is funded by the EC H2020 Project NUNATARYUK. Support on remote sensing
imagery access by the WMO Polar Space Task Group.
Repository Name:
EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
Type:
Conference
,
notRev
,
info:eu-repo/semantics/conferenceObject
Format:
application/pdf
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