Antarctic Permafrost Active Layer Thickness Measurements at Livingston Island

PERMATHERMAL network provides raw active layer thickness data from a 100x100 meter grid on Livingston Island, Antarctica. Measurements are taken manually once per year during the thaw season at the Limnopolar Lake CALM site. This monitoring network, led by Dr. Miguel Ángel de Pablo of Universidad de Alcalá, began in 2000 and was last updated in February 2023.

Use Cases

• Modeling active layer thickness trends from yearly thaw depth measurements to assess climate change impacts.
• Analyzing spatial variability of thaw depth across the 121-node (100x100m with 10m spacing) CALM grid.
• Correlating seasonal thaw data with other network metrics like permafrost temperature and snow depth.
• Validating remote sensing or thermal models with ground-truth data from the Byers Peninsula monitoring site.

Strengths

• Long-term monitoring program with data collection starting in the year 2000.
• Structured sampling from a fixed 100x100 meter grid with consistent 10-meter node spacing.

Limitations

• Sample size is limited to a single annual measurement per node, providing low temporal resolution.
• Geographic coverage is restricted to specific sites on Livingston and Deception Islands, not representative of the entire Antarctic.

Provenance

Source

PERMATHERMAL monitoring network led by Dr. Miguel Ángel de Pablo, Universidad de Alcalá (Spain).

Collection Method

Data acquired by manual mechanical probing at each grid node during the thaw season.

Time Range

Monitoring started in 2000; data collection is ongoing with yearly updates.

Freshness

Annual update frequency during the thaw season; metadata last updated in February 2023.

Geography

Limnopolar Lake CALM site (A25) on Byers Peninsula, Livingston Island, South Shetland Archipelago, Antarctica.