Settlements located within the permafrost extent in the Arctic Circumpolar Permafrost Region, 2017

We defined permafrost settlements as settlements located within the permafrost extent, as modelled by Obu et al. (2019). The permafrost extent is based on the modeled temperature at the top of the permafrost(TTOP model) for the period 2000-–2016. The permafrost extent is available at the circum-Arctic scale, with a resolution of 1 km2.The permafrost zones are defined as follows: continuous (90-–100% area coverage), discontinuous (50–-90% area coverage), and sporadic (0-–50% area coverage).

To estimate the future of permafrost settlements, we used projected permafrost extents modeled by Hjort et al. (2018) using Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 2.6, 4.5, and 8.5 for the period 2041–2060. The model is binary and uses 30 arc-second grid cells (1 km2) to determine if permafrost is present or absent. We used the consensus index (Ic), that which classifies future permafrost extent into hazard zones (1, low; 2, medium; and 3, high hazard zones). When defining hazard zones, the consensus index considers the relative increase of the active layer thickness, ground ice content, ground temperature, permafrost thaw potential, surface properties (sediment/bedrock), fine-grained sediment content, frost susceptibility of ground material, and slope gradient.

Some estimates made with linear interpolation technique for 509 settlements using 2002 census data. (Data of settlements over 500 inhabitants inside AHDR's definition on Arctic -77 estimates for 2002)

Detailed information about the methods can be found in the publication to which this dataset is a supplement.

Citation

In order to use these data, you must cite this data set with the following citation:

Wang, Shinan, & Ramage, Justine. (2021). Settlements located within the permafrost extent in the Arctic Circumpolar Permafrost Region (Version 1) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4519217