New Publication: A Circum-Arctic Monitoring Framework for Quantifying Annual Erosion Rates of Permafrost Coasts

New Publication: A Circum-Arctic Monitoring Framework for Quantifying Annual Erosion Rates of Permafrost Coasts

February 9, 2023

I’m happy to share my newest publication on quantifying circum-Arctic erosion rates at high spatial resolution and on an annual basis via Synthetic Apertaure RADAR data, deep learning, and change vector analysis. Co-authored by Andreas Dietz, Tobias Ullmann and Claudia Künzer.

From the abstract: This study demonstrates a circum-Arctic monitoring framework for quantifying annual change of permafrost-affected coasts at a spatial resolution of 10 m. Frequent cloud coverage and challenging lighting conditions, including polar night, limit the usability of optical data in Arctic regions. For this reason, Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR) data in the form of annual median and standard deviation (sd) Sentinel-1 (S1) backscatter images covering the months June–September for the years 2017–2021 were computed. Annual composites for the year 2020 were hereby utilized as input for the generation of a high-quality coastline product via a Deep Learning (DL) workflow, covering 161,600 km of the Arctic coastline. The previously computed annual S1 composites for the years 2017 and 2021 were employed as input data for the Change Vector Analysis (CVA)-based coastal change investigation. The generated DL coastline product served hereby as a reference. Maximum erosion rates of up to 67 m per year could be observed based on 400 m coastline segments. Overall highest average annual erosion can be reported for the United States (Alaska) with 0.75 m per year, followed by Russia with 0.62 m per year. Out of all seas covered in this study, the Beaufort Sea featured the overall strongest average annual coastal erosion of 1.12 m. Several quality layers are provided for both the DL coastline product and the CVA-based coastal change analysis to assess the applicability and accuracy of the output products. The predicted coastal change rates show good agreement with findings published in previous literature. The proposed methods and data may act as a valuable tool for future analysis of permafrost loss and carbon emissions in Arctic coastal environments.

Access the full article: Philipp, M.; Dietz, A.; Ullmann, T.; Kuenzer, C. A Circum-Arctic Monitoring Framework for Quantifying Annual Erosion Rates of Permafrost Coasts. Remote Sens. 2023, 15, 818. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15030818

you may also like:

“Super-Test-Site Würzburg” consortium meeeting

The core team of our “Super-Test-Site Würzburg” consortium (University of Würzburg, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg and the German Aerospace Center) met again in Würzburg on the...

New paper on the digital divide in Africa’s cities published

Our team of researchers from the Earth Observation Center (EOC) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, and our Earth Observation Research Cluster (EORC) published a new study on the digital divide in Africa: A...

Successful fieldwork at the Naryn River in Kyrgyzstan

Successful fieldwork at the Naryn River in Kyrgyzstan

During the last week, EORC PI Florian Betz, EAGLE student Ariana Arguello-Cordero and FluBig team member Magdalena Lauermann from Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt have been on a field campaign in Kyrgyzstan to collect data for the FluBig project dedicated to...

EO4CAM Meeting in Oberpfaffenhofen

EO4CAM Meeting in Oberpfaffenhofen

On 5 June 2025, representatives from the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection (StMUV), the Bavarian Environment Agency (LfU), and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) met at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen as part of the EO4CAM (Earth Observation...