This raster dataset, in Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF format (COG), provides information on land surface changes at the pan-arctic scale. Multispectral Landsat-5 TM, Landsat-7 ETM+, Landsat-8 OLI, and Landsat-9 OLI-2 imagery (cloud-cover less than 70%, months July and August) was used for detecting disturbance trends (associated with abrupt permafrost degradation) between 2005 and 2024. For each satellite image, we calculated the Tasseled Cap multi-spectral index to translate the spectral reflectance signal to the semantic information Brightness, Greenness, and Wetness. In order to characterize change information, we calculated the linear trend of Brightness, Greenness, and Wetness over two decades at the individual pixel level, based on annually aggregated data. The final map product therefore contains information on the direction and magnitude of change for all three Tasseled Cap parameters at 30 m spatial resolution across the pan-arctic permafrost domain. Features detected include coastal erosion, lake drainage, infrastructure expansion, and fires. The general processing methodology was developed by Fraser et al. (2014) and adapted and expanded by Nitze et al. (2016, 2018). Here, we upscaled the processing to the circum-arctic permafrost region and applied it to the recent 20-year period from 2005 through 2024. The service covers the permafrost region up to 81° North: Alaska (USA), Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Mongolia, and China. For Russia and China, regions not containing permafrost were excluded. The data have been processed in Google Earth Engine as part of the research projects ERC PETA-CARB, ESA CCI+ Permafrost, NSF Permafrost Discovery Gateway, and EU Arctic PASSION. The dataset is a contribution to the 'Pan-Arctic Requirements-Driven Permafrost Service' of the Arctic PASSION project (see References). Changes in the Tasseled Cap indices – Brightness, Greenness, and Wetness – are displayed in the image bands red, green, and blue, respectively. Here, coastal erosion (a trend of a land surface transitioning to a water surface) is depicted in dark blue tones, while coastal accretion (a trend of a water surface transitioning to a land surface) is depicted in bright orange colors. Drained lakes are shown in bright yellow or orange colors, depending on the soil conditions and vegetation regrowth. Fire scars are a further common feature, appearing in different colors depending on the time of the fire and the pre-fire land cover. The data can be explored via the Arctic Landscape EXplorer (ALEX; see References) and are available as a public web map service (WMS; see References), both hosted by Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research.
This raster dataset, in Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF format (COG), provides information on land surface changes at the pan-arctic scale. Multispectral Landsat-5 TM, Landsat-7 ETM+, and Landsat-8 OLI imagery (cloud-cover less than 80%, months July and August) was used for detecting disturbance trends (associated with abrupt permafrost degradation) between 2003 and 2022. For each satellite image we calculated the Tasseled Cap multi-spectral index to translate the spectral reflectance signal to the semantic information Brightness, Greenness, and Wetness. In order to characterize change information, we calculated the linear trend of the Brightness, Greenness and Wetness over two decades on the individual pixel level. The final map product therefore contains information on the direction and magnitude of change for all three Tasseled Cap parameters in 30m spatial resolution across the pan-arctic permafrost domain. Features detected include coastal erosion, lake drainage, infrastructure expansion, and fires. The general processing methodology was developed by Fraser et al. 2014 and adapted and expanded by Nitze et al. 2016 and Nitze et al. 2018. Here we upscaled the processing to the circum-arctic permafrost region and the recent 20-year period from 2003 through 2022. The service covers the permafrost region up to 81° North: Alaska (USA), Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Mongolia, and China. For Russia and China, regions not containing permafrost were excluded. The data has been processed in Google EarthEngine within the research projects ERC PETA-CARB, ESA CCI+ Permafrost, NSF Permafrost Discovery Gateway, and EU Arctic PASSION. The dataset is a contribution to the 'Panarctic requirements-driven Permafrost Service' of the Arctic PASSION project (see references). Changes in the Tasseled Cap indices Brightness, Greenness, and Wetness are displayed in the image bands red, green, and blue, respectively. Here, coastal erosion (a trend of a land surface transitioning to a water surface) is depicted in dark blue colors, while coastal accretion (a trend of a water surface transitioning to a land surface) is depicted in bright orange colors. Drained lakes appear in bright yellow or orange colors, depending on the soil conditions and vegetation regrowth. Fire scars are a further common feature, which can appear in different colors, depending on the time of the fire and pre-fire land cover. The data can be explored via the Arctic Landscape EXplorer (ALEX, see references) and is available as a public web map service (WMS, see references), both hosted by Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research.
Whereas deforestation is still a major threat to various ecosystem goods and services worldwide, there is an increasing number of regions and countries, in which the trend in forest cover became reversed, i.e. deforestation gave way to an increase in forest are. This change in trend from decreasing to expanding forest areas has been called 'forest transition' by Mather (1992), a concept, which has been used since then in an impressive series of regional and national studies. Originally, studies on forest dynamics were mainly motivated by concerns about sustainable timber supply. Later, the focus shifted to biodiversity issues, as both decline and expansion in forest area go parallel with changes in biodiversity. Because forests are also important reser-voirs of carbon, the growing interest in national and global carbon accounting triggered the latest wave of studies on forest transition processes. In the proposed project, we intend to reconstruct changes in forest area in Switzerland over the last 160 years based on unique database on forest cover including 7 time steps since the 1840s. Separately, we will conduct a case study for the Canton of Zurich for 333 years based on an additional excellent historical source, i.e. the Gyger-map from 1667. We want to study forest dynamics, search for forest transition processes, but also aim at searching for patterns of change in forest areas, which go beyond the forest transition concept, i.e. recent secondary declines in forest areas due to the expansion of settlements and infrastructure in forested re-gions - a process which has been observed in many densely populated regions globally. In a second part of the study we will determine the main factors driving change in forest cover in Switzerland and on a longer time scale in the Canton of Zurich by combining spatially explicit modelling with explorative landscape historical analyses in an innovative way. In the last part of the study, we aim at assessing the implications of forest cover changes for selected ecosystem goods and services, i.e. biodiversity and carbon sequestration, by combining the data base on forest cover with information taken from the Swiss National Forest Inventory.