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

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.

Keywords

• permafrost
• cryolithozone
• landscape indication
• cryogenic processes
• geoecological mapping