Nicu Ionut Cristi, Rubensdotter Lena, Tanyaș Hakan, Lombardo Luigi
High North Department, Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), Fram Centre, N-9296, Tromsø, Norway.
Geohazard and Earth Observation Department, Geological Survey of Norway (NGU), P.O. Box 6315 Torgarden, 7491, Trondheim, Norway.
Sci Data. 2024 Aug 17;11(1):894. doi: 10.1038/s41597-024-03754-7.
Cryospheric hazards - in this case, thaw slumps (TS) and thermo-erosion gullies (TEG) - are phenomena typical of permafrost-dominated landscapes. Open datasets informing about their spatial, temporal and size distributions in the Arctic are still uncommon, as opposed to the systematic availability of this information for geomorphic processes in mid- to low- latitudes. To date, only the most populated region of Svalbard was covered with TS and TEG inventories. Here, we extend the respective information to most of the Archipelago, totalling 8491 polygons, out of which 3679 are TSs and 4812 are TEGs. These have been manually mapped from aerial photographs throughout Svalbard across the 14 largest ice-free regions. The SvalCryo inventory is highly relevant as the Arctic environment undergoes alarming changes in response to global warming. The idea behind the two inventories is to support the geoscientific community in the quest to evaluate the environmental response to climate change, by creating a baseline for change monitoring, and ultimately to serve as basis for susceptibility, hazard and risk assessment models.
冰冻圈灾害——在这种情况下，指融冻滑塌（TS）和热融侵蚀沟（TEG）——是多年冻土主导地区特有的现象。与中低纬度地区地貌过程信息的系统可得性相反，目前仍缺乏能反映北极地区这些灾害的空间、时间和规模分布的公开数据集。迄今为止，只有斯瓦尔巴群岛人口最密集的地区有融冻滑塌和热融侵蚀沟清单。在此，我们将相关信息扩展到了该群岛的大部分地区，总计8491个多边形区域，其中3679个是融冻滑塌，4812个是热融侵蚀沟。这些区域是通过对斯瓦尔巴群岛14个最大无冰区域的航空照片进行人工测绘得到的。随着北极环境因全球变暖而发生令人担忧的变化，斯瓦尔巴群岛冰冻圈灾害清单具有高度相关性。这两份清单背后的理念是，通过创建变化监测基线，支持地球科学界评估环境对气候变化的响应，并最终作为敏感性、灾害和风险评估模型的基础。
