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1. Permafrost Regions In Transition: Introduction

   https://doi.org/10.24057/2071-9388-2021-081  

   Streletskiy, Dmitry A.; Maslakov, Alexey A.; Streletskaya, Irina D.; Nelson, Frederick E. (December 2021, GEOGRAPHY, ENVIRONMENT, SUSTAINABILITY)

   Russian permafrost regions are unparalleled in extent, history of development, population presence, and the scale of economic activities. This special issue, «Permafrost Regions in Transition», provides a timely opportunity to (a) examine major issues associated with changing permafrost conditions in natural environments and areas of economic development; (b) present insights into new methods of permafrost investigations; and (c) describe new opportunities and risks threatening sustainable development of Arctic populations and industrial centers in Russia. The issue begins with papers focused on methods of permafrost research, followed by papers focused on examining changes in permafrost under natural conditions, and in Arctic settlements. The last two papers examine potential impacts of permafrost degradation on the Russian economy and potential health implications. 

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2. Biophysical permafrost map indicates ecosystem processes dominate permafrost stability in the Northern Hemisphere

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac20f3  

   Ran, Youhua; Jorgenson, M Torre; Li, Xin; Jin, Huijun; Wu, Tonghua; Li, Ren; Cheng, Guodong (September 2021, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract The stability of permafrost is of fundamental importance to socio-economic well-being and ecological services, involving broad impacts to hydrological cycling, global budgets of greenhouse gases and infrastructure safety. This study presents a biophysical permafrost zonation map that uses a rule-based geographic information system (GIS) model integrating global climate and ecological datasets to classify and map permafrost regions (totaling 19.76 × 10 6 km 2 , excluding glaciers and lakes) in the Northern Hemisphere into five types: climate-driven (CD) (19% of area), CD/ecosystem-modified (41%), CD/ecosystem protected (3%), ecosystem-driven (29%), and ecosystem-protected (8%). Overall, 81% of the permafrost regions in the Northern Hemisphere are modified, driven, or protected by ecosystems, indicating the dominant role of ecosystems in permafrost stability in the Northern Hemisphere. Permafrost driven solely by climate occupies 19% of permafrost regions, mainly in High Arctic and high mountains areas, such as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. This highlights the importance of reducing ecosystem disturbances (natural and human activity) to help slow permafrost degradation and lower the related risks from a warming climate. 

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3. Free Iron and Iron-Reducing Microorganisms in Permafrost and Permafrost-Affected Soils of Northeastern Siberia

   https://doi.org/10.1134/S1064229320100166  

   Rivkina, E. M.; Fedorov-Davydov, D. G.; Zakharyuk, A. G.; Shcherbakova, V. A.; Vishnivetskaya, T. A. (October 2020, Eurasian Soil Science)

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4. Modeling Long-Term Permafrost Degradation: HOW FAST PERMAFROST CAN THAW?

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JF004655  

   Nicolsky, D. J.; Romanovsky, V. E. (June 2018, Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface)

   Permafrost, as an important part of the Cryosphere, has been strongly affected by climate warming, and a wide spread of permafrost responses to the warming is currently observed. In particular, at some locations rather slow rates of permafrost degradations are noticed. We related this behavior to the presence of unfrozen water in frozen fine‐grained earth material. In this paper, we examine not‐very‐commonly‐discussed heat flux from the ground surface into the permafrost and consequently discuss implications of the presence of unfrozen liquid water on long‐term thawing of permafrost. We conducted a series of numerical experiments and demonstrated that the presence of fine‐grained material with substantial unfrozen liquid water content at below 0°C temperature can significantly slow down the thawing rate and hence can increase resilience of permafrost to the warming events. This effect is highly nonlinear, and a difference between the rates of thawing in fine‐ and coarse‐grained materials is more drastic for lower values of heat flux incoming into permafrost. For high heat flux, the difference between these rates almost disappears. As near‐surface permafrost temperature increases towards 0°C and the changes in the ground temperature become less evident, the future observation networks should try to incorporate measurements of unfrozen liquid water content in the near‐surface permafrost and heat flux into permafrost in addition to the existing temperature observations. 

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5. Past permafrost dynamics can inform future permafrost carbon-climate feedbacks

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00886-3  

   Jones, Miriam C.; Grosse, Guido; Treat, Claire; Turetsky, Merritt; Anthony, Katey Walter; Brosius, Laura (December 2023, Communications Earth & Environment)

   Abstract Climate warming threatens to destabilize vast northern permafrost areas, potentially releasing large quantities of organic carbon that could further disrupt the climate. Here we synthesize paleorecords of past permafrost-carbon dynamics to contextualize future permafrost stability and carbon feedbacks. We identify key landscape differences between the last deglaciation and today that influence the response of permafrost to atmospheric warming, as well as landscape-level differences that limit subsequent carbon uptake. We show that the current magnitude of thaw has not yet exceeded that of previous deglaciations, but that permafrost carbon release has the potential to exert a strong feedback on future Arctic climate as temperatures exceed those of the Pleistocene. Better constraints on the extent of subsea permafrost and its carbon pool, and on carbon dynamics from a range of permafrost thaw processes, including blowout craters and megaslumps, are needed to help quantify the future permafrost-carbon-climate feedbacks. 

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