Hotspot Region of Permafrost Change

In the ESA DUE GlobPermafrost project Hot Spot Regions of Permafrost Change (HRPC) maps changes in surface characteristics using the full Landsat archive (TM, ETM+, OLI) from 1999 to 2014. Changes can be gradual (press disturbance) or rapid (pulse disturbances). Press disturbances are characterized by gradual changes in land cover such as shrub expansion, wetting, drying, and active layer deepening. Pulse disturbances are characterized by rapid changes such as thermokarst and thermo-erosion, lake formation, expansion, and shrinkage, erosion, and wildfires. The HRPC products provide trends of multi-spectral indices such as Tasselled Cap brightness, greenness, wetness and normalized indices (NDVI, NDWI, NDMI) in 4 regional transects spanning the panarctic permafrost domain.