Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence Observations during a Controlled Warming Experiment

Wagner, Anna M.; Lindsey, Nathaniel J.; Dou, Shan; Gelvin, Arthur; Saari, Stephanie; Williams, Christopher; Ekblaw, Ian; Ulrich, Craig; Borglin, Sharon; Morales, Alejandro; Ajo-Franklin, Jonathan

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-29292-y

Title: Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence Observations during a Controlled Warming Experiment

Journal Article · 19 July 2018 · Scientific Reports

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29292-y · OSTI ID:1477422

Wagner, Anna M. ^[1];

^[2];

^[3]; Gelvin, Arthur ^[1]; Saari, Stephanie ^[1]; Williams, Christopher ^[4]; Ekblaw, Ian ^[3]; Ulrich, Craig ^[3]; Borglin, Sharon ^[3]; Morales, Alejandro ^[3];

^[3]

U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab. (CRREL), Fairbanks, AK (United States)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Earth and Planetary Sciences Dept.; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab. (CRREL), Hanover, NH (United States)

Global climate change has resulted in a warmer Arctic, with projections indicating accelerated modifications to permafrost in the near future. The thermal, hydrological, and mechanical physics of permafrost thaw have been hypothesized to couple in a complex fashion but data collection efforts to study these feedbacks in the field have been limited. As a result, laboratory and numerical models have largely outpaced field calibration datasets. We present the design, execution, and initial results from the first decameter-scale controlled thawing experiment, targeting coupled thermal/mechanical response, particularly the temporal sequence of surface subsidence relative to permafrost degradation at depth. The warming test was conducted in Fairbanks, AK, and utilized an array of in-ground heaters to induce thaw of a ~11 × 13 × 1.5 m soil volume over 63 days. The 4-D temperature evolution demonstrated that the depth to permafrost lowered 1 m during the experiment. The resulting thaw-induced surface deformation was ~10 cm as observed using a combination of measurement techniques. Surface deformation occurred over a smaller spatial domain than the full thawed volume, suggesting that gradients in cryotexture and ice content were significant. Our experiment provides the first large field calibration dataset for multiphysics thaw models.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE; Dept. of Defense (DOD) (United States); National Science Foundation (NSF) (United States)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1477422

Journal Information:: Scientific Reports, Journal Name: Scientific Reports Vol. 8; ISSN 2045-2322

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Reviews and syntheses: Changing ecosystem influences on soil thermal regimes in northern high-latitude permafrost regions Loranty, Michael M.; Abbott, Benjamin W.; Blok, Daan Biogeosciences, Vol. 15, Issue 17 https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-5287-2018	journal	January 2018
A distributed temperature profiling method for assessing spatial variability in ground temperatures in a discontinuous permafrost region of Alaska Léger, Emmanuel; Dafflon, Baptiste; Robert, Yves The Cryosphere, Vol. 13, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2853-2019	journal	January 2019

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