Landscape Indication Of Permafrost Conditions For Geoecological Assessment &amp; Mapping At Various Scales

Larisa I Zotova

doi:10.24057/2071-9388-2021-039

Abstract

In this paper, the features of landscape indication of permafrost characteristics required for assessing the environmental state at various research scales are discussed. A number of permafrost characteristics affect the geoecological state and stability of natural landscapes, especially in the context of climate warming and technogenic surface disturbances. These include the distribution, temperature regime, thickness and cryogenic structure of permafrost, seasonal freezing and thawing, as well as the development of cryogenic processes. Their determination through the landscape view, however, is ambiguous. The choice of certain permafrost characteristics for geoecological assessment is based on many years of experience in creating cryo-ecological maps on a landscape basis by the school of Faculty of Geography, Moscow State University. The recent studies on the identification of regional cryoindicators are analyzed, including the issues of cryogenic landscapes classification and clarification of the boundaries of geocryological zones using the landscape structural method. The content of the two maps, «Permafrost Landscape Differentiation Map of the Russia Cryolithozone» at a scale of 1: 15,000,000 and «Permafrost Landscape Map of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)» at a scale of 1: 1,500,000, is presented, as well as their use as a basis for environmental planning and geoecological assessment.

Highlights

Landscape indicators related to permafrost characteristics have found wide application in scientific research and survey, especially in engineering and geocryological mapping
The study and mapping of the permafrost zone are based on the geosystem approach, in which landscape indication is considered as one of the main methods
There is a certain sequence in the cryogenic processes indication

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Landscape indicators related to permafrost characteristics have found wide application in scientific research and survey, especially in engineering and geocryological mapping. The type of landscape corresponds to the nature of permafrost distribution; types of terrain (identified by the stratigraphicgenetic complex) – to the cryogenic structure and ice content in the sediments; types of tracts and facies – to the temperature of rocks and active layer thickness In this case, geological and geomorphological factors (rank of terrain types) were compared with vegetation groups. If we consider small-scale maps (from 1: 2,500,000 and smaller) of individual regions (European North, Western Siberia, Yakutia, Eastern Siberia), landscape indication starts to work very effectively again This primarily applies to accumulative and denudation plains, within which the permafrost distribution, temperature, thawing depth, and often ice content, correspond to one of the landscapes. The most typical landscapes in all permafrost regions correspond to Central and Eastern Siberia, which include the most extensive platform massifs with similar landscape conditions prevailing in a long historical development

Findings

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSIONS