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4 million lakes in 'Lost Lakes' map offer clues to Arctic permafrost
The Arctic is dotted with millions of lakes that sit on persistently frozen soil called permafrost. These lakes are crucial for the region’s wildlife and local communities. However, as temperatures rise, the permafrost thaws, which causes new lakes to form or existing lakes to abruptly disappear as lake water drains away through newly created channels. Researchers have now created an interactive map called Lost Lakes that allows people to monitor changes in around 4 million Arctic lakes in near real time. It can also show how the lakes have changed since 2016. Monitoring lake dynamics can offer important clues for the underlying permafrost, the researchers say. “LostLakes is completely free and designed to be used by experts and non-experts at the same time,” Ingmar Nitze, a remote sensing researcher at Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute, which helped create the database, told Mongabay by email. Much of the Arctic’s ground sits on ice-rich permafrost. Over hundreds and thousands of years, this permafrost has accumulated massive amounts of carbon as plant, animal and microbe matter got trapped in the frozen soil. However, as the Arctic warms faster than the global average due to climate change, much of the region’s permafrost is thawing. “Once...