Copyright © 2009 IG SB, Siberian Branch of RAS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved doi:10.1016/j.gnr.2009.06.002

Geography and Natural Resources 30 (2009) 101–106

Introduction

Current global warming causes substantial changes in the geocryological situation and a sensible intensification of hazardous natural phenomena in the Arctic zone of East Siberia which can have significant effects on human life. Among them is the escalating enhancement of the rates at which the thermal abrasion, karst and erosion processes are taking place.

Thermal erosion implies natural erosion of permafrost soils and frozen earth materials via mechanical, chemical and thermal effects of water on the ice contained by them, followed by local thawing of the ice to form erosion scars, gullies, and subsidences [1-7]. The deepening of the perma-nent or ephemeral stream beds flowing on the layer of ice-containing earth materials is interpreted as the manifestation of vertical thermal erosion. A special variety of such erosion, which gives rise to articulated (in plan) canyon-gullies on the territory occupied by the ice complex, is termed the gully variant of thermal erosion [4]. The horizontal manifestation of thermal erosion implies a broadening of the banks of the river valleys, thermokarst hollows, and of the other land-forms. The arbitrariness of identifying the forms of vertical

(river and gully) erosion as well as of linear and lateral ther-mal erosion is determined by the fact that they often com-bine with the forms of thermal karst [8-10] and thermal abra-sion [11-13]. The formations, created by thermal abrasion, thermal karst and thermal erosion, can therefore be largely classed with the forms of thermal denudation.

In the Arctic zone of East Siberia, the processes of ther-mal denudations are taking place at a different pace. They are evolving particularly intensely across areas occupied by earth materials of the ice complex in yedoma landscape. By an ice complex is meant a mature layer of frozen ground in the form of a special horizon of ice-containing Pleistocene loamy sands and loams saturated with ice veins with dif-ferent compositions, origins, age and thickness [1, 14, 15]. More than 50% of the volume of the ice complex are rep-resented by fossil ice. When viewed in section, the position of the upper boundary of the ice complex coincides in some places with the bed of seasonally thawing ground. The other areas of the territory are characterized by a deeper occur-rence of this boundary because of the presence of a protec-tive layer [16]. The term “protective layer” implies frozen ground without ice veins or wedges lying, when viewed in section, between seasonally thawing ground and the upper boundary of the ice complex. The protective layer, and the overlying active layer are generally identified as a pattern of cover formations. It is likely that the thicker is the pattern, the lesser is the influence exerted by soil-forming, hydrologi-cal and other exogenous processes on the earth materials of the ice complex lying directly beneath it.

On the variation in geocryological, landscape and hydrological conditions in the Arctic zone of East Siberia in connection with climate warming

M. N. Grigoriev *, V. V. Kunitsky, R. V. Chzhan, and V. V. Shepelev

Permafrost Institute SB RAS, Yakutsk

Received 1 September 2008

* Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: Kunitsky@mpi.ysn.ru (V. V. Kunitsky); zhang@mpi.ysn.ru (R. V. Chzhan); shepelev@mpi.ysn.ru (V. V. Shepelev)

Abstract

We examine the interaction of the ice complex with the coastal waters of the Arctic seas and with the waters of the land surface of East Siberia. We report on the development of cryogenic processes which are hazardous for the existence of residential centers on this territory under global climate warming.

Keywords: permafrost zone, ice complex, thermoabrasion, thermokarst, thermoerosion, thermodenudation.

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Results and discussion

With ongoing global warming, the extensive manifestation of thermal denudation is a serious hazard to human health and life in the Arctic zone of East Siberia. The observed intensifi-cation of the denudation processes gives rise to an additional volume of surface water and suprapermafrost water due to the decrease from year to year – of the thickness of the protective layer, and to the progressive thawing of new masses of fossil ice. This process causes substantial restructuring of the relief and of the hydrographic network, underflooding of human settlements, destruction of separate buildings, power supply systems, coastal navigation facilities, etc.

The processes on the shores of the Arctic seas. Given cur-rent warming of the climate in the Arctic, the processes of thermal denudation of the shores show an active manifes-tation. The ice-containing sea shores, occupying more than one-third of the East-Siberia’s coast, are retreating at a rate of 0.5 to 20 m/year (Fig. 1). The increase of their destruc-

tion rates constitutes a serious problem for local residents, industrial enterprises, and transport facilities. The shores that are composed by dispersed earth materials with high content of subterranean ice are home to human settlements, service lines, navigation support facilities for sea transport, and oth-er facilities. During the last decade the retreat of the shore escarps, combined with an intensification of cryogenic sur-face phenomena, often led to destruction of various coastal objects as well as to loss of radioisotope thermoelectric gen-erators used to supply power to lighthouses (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1. Enhancement of the rate of destruction of icy shores on key monitoring sites along the coast of the Laptev sea during

2004-2007.а – northeastern shore; b – northern cape of Muostakh Island; c – northeastern shore of Bykovsky Peninsula (Urochishche Mamon-tovy-Khaya).

Fig. 2. Navigation sign “Vankin” that slipped down from the up-per level of yedoma onto перу thermal terrace of Bol. Lyakhovsky

Island (East-Siberian Sea).

Sea encroachment causes the negative cryogenic proc-esses to intensify. Even at a large distance from the ice-clad shore there is taking place a disastrous development of thermoerosional gullies, and of thermokarst and thermosuf-fusion holes as well as cryosolifluction destruction of the slopes. As these processes encompass significant areas and are evolving at high rates, they can be more hazardous for technogenic facilities when compared with direct erosion of the shore cliffs.

Until recently, due to lack of information, the rate of de-struction of the shore escarps in these localities was diffi-cult to forecast. A relatively good body of data on long-term trends of shore dynamics has been accumulated to date from a large number of segments of the seas used in the research. It is now possible to predict the dates at which the facilities on the shore are to be relocated further inland and define timely protective measures.

It is expected that warming of the climate and a reduction in the pack ice area in the Arctic will lead to an intensifica-tion of the storm conditions, and to an acceleration of the re-moval of debris material, including organic carbon, from the shores to the shelf (Table 1). Carbon that is liberated from permafrost provides the source of greenhouse gases: meth-ane, and carbon dioxide.

M. N. Grigoriev et al. / Geography and Natural Resources 30 (2009) 101–106 103

According to the research done by the P. I. Melnikov Per-mafrost Institute SB RAS in collaboration with the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (Germa-ny), the ice-clad shores of the seas of East Siberia undergo-ing the destructive processes are producing large amounts of debris material (152 million tons per year) and organic carbon (4 million tons per year), or 55% of this mass cor-responding to debris material, and 69% to organic carbon of the total release of material from the shores of all Arctic seas into the polar basin. The amount of debris material supplied by the shores of the Laptev Sea and the East-Siberian Sea is nearly three times as large as the regional solid runoff of the rivers. Furthermore, the most important source of the coastal flow of sediment loads (both into the seas and into the Arctic basin in general) is provided by the ice complex of the East-Siberia’s shore areas. Its contribution to the flow of sediment loads from the shores of all Arctic seas constitutes 42%, with 66% corresponding to organic carbon.

These data are descriptive of the important role played by the dynamic activity of the shores in human activity, of the degree of risk to human life in the Arctic zone as well as of the need to obtain comprehensive information regarding the current and predicted characteristics of the cryogenic coastal processes in the shore area of East Siberia.

The processes in the tundra. An intensification of the pro-cesses of thermal degradation is also characteristic for the vast territories across which the ice complex occurs within the Arctic and sub-Arctic tundra. We now examine the de-gree, magnitude and uniqueness of these processes in the case study of the Alazeya river basin. The last two decades saw multiple disastrous floods causing serious material and moral damage to local residents. The largest ever flood occurred in the autumn of 2007 when many communities situated on the banks of the Alazeya were flooded or surrounded by water on all sides because the river merged together with nearby lakes. There occurred a slight rise of river water temperature, a reduction of the length of freezing-over of the rivers, an enhancement of the thawing of the earth materials of the ice complex, and an increase of the active layer thickness.

The Alazeya river basin lies to the north of the Polar Circle, largely within the Kolyma lowland. This part of the territory of Yakutia is distinguished by weakly dissected topography, with the surface altitudes less than 100 m pre-dominating. The highest altitudes here are concentrated at the table uplands of the Ulakhan-Tas mountain ranges (754 m), and of the Alazeya tablelands (954 m). Going toward the Alazeya river and to the valleys of its tributaries, their, not infrequently terraced, slopes are replaced by a nearly hori-zontal (step-like in some places) plain scattered by a myriad of open and closed lakes.

The northern part of the Alazeya basin with the villages of Andryushkino and Logashkino lies in the Nizhnekolymsky ulus (district), and the northern part with the communities Ar-gakhtakh (596 residents) and Svatai (603 residents), and the other villages (Aleko-Kyuel, Suchchino and Ebyakh) belongs to the territory of the Srednekolymsky ulus of Yakutia.

Thу northern sector of this river basin lying mainly above the 70th parallel refers to the Arctic climatic zone. According to the data from the Alazeya station, the yearly mean air tem-perature in this sector is –15.2 °C, and the annual average amount of atmospheric precipitation varies from 209 to 276 mm (Tables 2 and 3).

The southern sector of the river basin is wholly within the Siberian region of the sub-Arctic climatic zone. Accord-ing to available evidence, the yearly mean air temperature in this sector is –12.5 °C. The annual average amount of atmos-pheric precipitation is slightly less than in the seaside sector of this basin. Thus, in the area of the town of Srednekolymsk the yearly standard amount of precipitation is 290 mm, and in the area of the Argakhtakh and Oyusardakh weather sta-tions it is less than 230 mm.

The main water artery of the territory under investiga-tion, the Alazeya river, has its origin on the southern slopes of the Alazeya upland. This river is 1590 m long, its catch-ment area is 74.7 thou km2, and it is formed by the conflu-ence of the Nelkan and Kadylchan mountain streams [32]. Flowing along the western margin of the Kolyma lowland, it receives the waters from the Rassokha river, and from a

Table 1Numerical estimation of the flows of sediment loads and organic carbon into the Arctic basin as a result of bank erosion

and of the river runoff [17–29]

Arctic seasFlow of sediment loads

from the banksSolid discharge of

riversFlow of organic carbon

from the banksRemoval of organic

carbon by rivers106 t/year

White Sea 60 (not included in total flow of sediment loads) 17.9 (for two seas) 0.3 6.35 (for two seas)

Barents Sea 59 0.59Kara Sea 27.7 30.9 0.4 10.6Laptev Sea 62.2 28.6 1.63 6.8East Siberian Sea 90.2 25.15 2.39 1.86Chukchi Sea (Russian sector) 14.0 0.7 0.2 0.13Chukchi Sea (US sector) 14.0 125.1 (for two seas) 0.2 4.3 (for two seas)Beaufort Sea 7.9 0.09Total… 276 227.65 5.8 30.04

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number of smaller tributaries (Buor-Yurakh, Sloboda, Kusa-gan-Attakh, Ulyung-Sen, and others). A short distance from the settlement of Logashkino, the Alazeya falls into the East-Siberian Sea via its several branches to form an extensive sand-bar. The main branches forming it are represented by the Logashkin and Tynyalkut channels. The water flow rate of the Alazeya at its mouth averages 320 m3/s. The river is fed largely by snow and rain water.

The shallow channel of the Alazeya within the bounda-ries of the lowland is characterized by substantial meander-ing (every so often the meandering coefficient > 3) and a very gentle longitudinal profile. The altitude difference of the lowest water-level of the river from the location at the vil-lage of Argakhtakh to the site at the village of Andryushkino (a length of more than 250 km along the channel) does not exceed 10 m. The area occupied by the bends of the channel here is up to 5 km wide. The freezing-over period for the river starts at the end of September. The opening of the river after break-up of ice and the drifting of ice occurs at the end of May – beginning of June. Many tributaries of the Alazeya have their origins in lakes.

The lakes occupy 14.4% of the area of the Alazeya river basin, and their number is over 24 thousand. There occur floodplain and secondary lakes, old beds of rivers, and ther-mokarst water bodies. Most of the closed and open thermo-karst lakes are concentrated at the foothills of the Ulakhan-Tas range and of the Alazeya tableland as well as at the sur-face of the poorly pronounced (in the relief) interfluves along the Kolyma-Alazeya and Chukochya-Alazeya watersheds. The bottoms of these lakes lie at different levels.

The characteristic property of the water regime of the Alazeya is that the river has singly peaked floods encom-passing virtually the entire warm season. This is explained by the large number of open lakes, and by the characteristics of the suprapermafrost runoff within the basin. The wide oc-

currence of the suprapermafrost waters from the seasonally thawing layer is favored by the development of frost fissures. They, and post-cryogenic fissures, serve as the ducts for in-filtration of a definite amount of snowmelt water and liquid atmospheric precipitation during a warm season. It can be said that the territory of the Arctic and sub-Arctic tundra is characterized by the polygonal-localized type of infiltration feeding and runoff of suprapermafrost water of the season-ally thawed layer [33, 34]. Accumulating and seeping along cryogenic and post-cryogenic fissures, this water acts as though it were smoothing out temporally the entry of snow-melt and rain water into the rivers.

The territory of the Alazeya basin is in the region of geo-graphically continuous permafrost. This territory is divided into three zones as regards the type of permafrost [14]. The zones are represented on the terrain by streaks of a nearly latitudinal extent – from north to south they sequentially re-place one another and are termed, respectively, the Logash-inskaya, Argakhtakh-Andryushkinskaya and Svataiskaya geocryological zones. Their regional characteristics show considerable differences (Table 4).

The southern boundary of the Logashkinskaya geocryo-logical zone intersects the valley of the Alazeya river nearly under the 70th parallel. The northern boundary of the Svatais-kaya geocryological zone runs under the parallel of 68о 30’ N. The Argakhtakh-Andryushkinskaya geocryological zone is intermediate on the terrain between the Svataiskaya and Logashkinskaya geocryological zones.

A characteristic of the territory of the geocryological zones identified above implies that in them the layer of an-nual heat cycles on the interfluves and along the river valleys (to a depth of 10-15 m) is represented mainly by Quaternary sediments. The permafrost is distinguished by an uneven dis-tribution of the ice, with the sediments of the ice complex having the highest ice content.

Table 2Mean monthly and mean annual air temperatures (оС) in the northern part of the Alazeya river basin during 1947–1960 [30]

Station I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII YearAlazeya –34.0 –34.4 –30.3 –22.0 –8.4 2.0 6.6 4.9 0.2 –11.5 –24.7 –30.8 –15.2Vorontsovo –38.4 –36.4 –28.1 –16.4 –3.0 9.1 12.4 8.8 1.9 –12.9 –28.7 –35.6 –13.9Ozhogino –37.4 –34.8 –26.7 –15.4 –2.6 9.5 12.6 8.8 1.7 –12.5 –27.5 –34.5 –13.2Kolymskaya –34.8 –34.4 –28.3 –18.7 –4.7 7.7 10.9 7.8 2.0 –10.8 –25.4 –32.2 –13.4Srednekolymsk –37.6 –34.7 –26.4 –14.5 –0.7 11.0 13.6 9.8 2.9 –11.0 –27.1 –35.0 –12.5

Table 3Monthly mean and annual amount of atmospheric precipitation (mm) in the northern part of the Alazeya river basin

during1947–1960 [31]

Station I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII YearAlazeya 20 12 18 13 13 21 34 38 25 30 26 21 271Argakhtakh 18 13 10 8 10 29 34 28 20 22 19 16 227Oyusardakh 13 9 8 6 7 31 39 33 21 16 14 12 209Sredne-kolymsk 20 14 11 9 12 29 37 32 22 23 22 19 250

M. N. Grigoriev et al. / Geography and Natural Resources 30 (2009) 101–106 105

Basically, the landscapes within the Alazeya basin con-stitute natural systems. They are natural-territorial perma-frost formations, as also are anthropogenic landscapes within them in the form of rarely occurring inclusions [36–40].

The lower part of the valley of the Alazeya river lies in the Alazeya-Kolyma lake-thermokarst province. There is a wide occurrence of yedoma landscape of the low plains forming subshrubs, lichen and grass-green moss cover of the Arctic tundras on humic-peaty-gley permafrost soils, with the ice complex occurring near the surface. Less character-istic for the watersheds of this territory are the permafrost landscapes of typical southern tundras as well as open wood-land of larch trees. The thermokarst plains and the bottom of the thermokarst hollows of this province are characterized by the development of cryogenic landscapes of tundra bogs with polygonal surface, with Eryophorum, subshrubs-green moss, lichen, grass and shrubs associations growing on peat and peat-gley soils.

A general grasp of the relief modification and of the degree of watering of the territory occupied by the Alazeya basin is provided by the comparison of the topographic evidence ob-tained in 1952 and 1982 with the geomorphological and hy-drological situation observed in space-acquired images.

The data provided here for the Argakhtakh-Andryush-kinskaya geocryological zone make it apparent that the time interval 1982-2002 saw a substantial increase in the surface area of many water bodies which are located in the neigh-borhood of the Alazeya and are often connected with it via branches. Such an increase is exemplified by Lake Baidy, and by the open lakes whose waters are underflooding the territory of the village of Andryushkino. The objective rea-son behind these changes is the ongoing warming of the cli-mate of the Arctic, and the regional increase of the rates of thermal denudation of ice-containing earth materials.

Conclusion

The substantial rise of air temperatures in the Arctic zone of East Siberia was most clearly pronounced in an intensi-fication of cryogenic geomorphological processes in areas

along the maritime coast composed by ice-containing earth materials. In recent years (2004-2007) the rate of destruc-tion and backward retreat of the ice-containing shores at a number of monitoring sites increased by a factor of 1.5-2. The aforementioned time interval saw an enhancement of storm activity due to a reduction in the area of the fast ice, and an abrupt enhancement of solifluction processes on the slopes.

Yedoma landscapes are widespread in the Arctic zone of East Siberia, the natural base of which is represented by earth materials of the ice complex; these landscapes respond in a very unique fashion to climatic changes. Given the cur-rent global warming process, most of the permafrost zone, characterized by the occurrence of frozen ground, turns into the arena of a rather active, even if local, manifestation of thermal denudation. The yedoma relief shows successively new forms of thermal abrasion, thermal karst and thermal erosion. Their emergence is accompanied by liberation of considerable amounts of free moisture produced by the thaw-ing of fossil ice. This process increases the volume of surface water, alters the regime of its runoff and the water balance of the territory, and leads to restructuring of some elements of the hydrographic network.

The ongoing acceleration of thermal denudation causes a number of negative hydrological processes (enhanced de-struction of the coast and lake shores and of the river banks, underflooding of some places, and the passage of long-last-ing and anomalously high floods). These factors all consti-tute a threat to human life and activity in the residential cent-ers situated along the coast of the seas of the Arctic Ocean, and on low terraces of the plain rivers falling into it.

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