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Absence of ice-bonded permafrost beneath an Arctic lagoon

Published on by Micaela Pedrazas
Relict permafrost is ubiquitous beneath the sea floor of the Arctic coastal shelf, but relatively little is known about its characteristics near shore. The presence or absence and thawing of subsea permafrost are vital information because it stores an atmosphere’s worth of carbon and protects against erosion. Through electrical resistivity imaging across a lagoon on the Alaska Beaufort Sea coast in summer, we found that the subsurface is not ice-bonded down to approximately 20 m continually from within the lagoon, across the beach, and underneath an ice-wedge polygon on the tundra. This contrasts with the broadly held idea of a gently sloping ice-bonded permafrost table across the land-sea interface extending from land to offshore. The extensive unfrozen zone, a marine talik connected to what is likely cryopeg on land, can be a source and conduit for water and organic matter, is vulnerable to physical degradation, and is liable to biochemical processes.

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Funding

LTER: Beaufort Sea Lagoons: An Arctic Coastal Ecosystem in TransitionDirectorate for GeosciencesFind out more...

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