Surface Water Dynamics in the North America Arctic Based on 2000–2016 Landsat Data

Abstract

At high latitudes, lake and river ecosystems are predominant and these ecosystems are undergoing significant changes due to climate change. Although many scientists have studied lakes and rivers in the Arctic region, the inland water dynamics in this region at the continental scale remain unknown. In this study, the dynamics of the Arctic water were analyzed at the continental scale using Landsat ortho-rectified surface reflectance products of fine spatial and temporal resolutions for the period of 2000–2016, using the random forests method. The results of this study produced the following revelations: (i) the water area is decreasing year by year in the long term; (ii) the water loss and gain always show the same dynamic pattern spatially and temporally; (iii) the spatial distribution of the water budget is strongly linked to permafrost, which implies that permafrost determines the distribution pattern of the water dynamics more than climatic factors; and (iv) the dynamics of the water show a certain rule with surface temperature, but the pattern of the dynamics cannot be explained by temperature alone.

Keywords

• Arctic
• surface water
• dynamics
• Landsat
• climate change