Factors Influencing the Spatiotemporal Changes of Permafrost in Northeast China from 1982 to 2020

Dongyu Yang, Daqing Zhan, Miao Li () and Shuying Zang
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Dongyu Yang: College of Geographical Science, Harbin Normal University, Harbin 150025, China
Daqing Zhan: College of Geographical Science, Harbin Normal University, Harbin 150025, China
Miao Li: College of Geographical Science, Harbin Normal University, Harbin 150025, China
Shuying Zang: College of Geographical Science, Harbin Normal University, Harbin 150025, China

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-22

Abstract: Permafrost in northeast China, which is at the southern edge of the high-latitude permafrost belt in Eurasia, is extremely sensitive to climate warming. However, the distribution of permafrost in the region in recent years has been poorly studied, and there is a lack of understanding of the relative importance of environmental factors affecting the region. Based on observed ground surface temperature (GST) data, this study quantifies changes in the permafrost area in northeast China from 1982 to 2020 using a surface frost number model, and the influencing factors are identified based on dominance analysis and spatial correlation analysis. The results suggest that the permafrost in northeast China during the observation period underwent degradation with a degradation rate of 0.33 × 10 4 km 2 /a. In addition, the permafrost degradation also exhibited altitudinal and latitudinal zonality. Permafrost degradation under typical grassland, deciduous forest, and savannah cover was more significant than that under evergreen forest, mixed forest, and shrubbery cover. As revealed by the dominance analysis results, the annual average snow cover, annual average snow depth and annual average normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) had the largest contributions to the variance of the permafrost area in northeast China, accounting for 88.3% of the total variance contribution of the six influencing factors. The spatial correlation results reveal that areas with a significantly increased NDVI and significantly reduced snow depth and snow cover were coincident with areas with significantly degraded permafrost. Hence, the snow cover, snow depth, and NDVI were found to have the greatest influence on the permafrost distribution in northeast China. The results of this study evidently increase the understanding of the changing permafrost in northeast China, providing important knowledge about permafrost for researchers and the related community.

Keywords: permafrost; northeast permafrost area; surface frost number model; influencing factors; change trend (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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