3.2.1 Geology and geomorphology
Sobo-Sise is an island in the southeastern part of the Lena Delta. Its west to east trending, elongated shape mainly developed by the interaction of two main branches of the Lena River.
Towards the north, the Sardakhskaya Channel borders the island, whereas the Bykovskaya Channel forms the southern margins (Figure 21).
Although there is currently no detailed information about the island's geological setting, Sobo-Sise can be roughly subdivided into two sections. Large parts of the southern as well as smaller parts of the western reach belong to the first terrace. This terrace consists of floodplains with a different annual sedimentation activity. Lower parts (max. 4 m a.r.l.) of the first terrace comprise sandbanks that change their shape and spatial distribution after the annual Lena flood in late spring. Higher levels of the first terrace comprise shallow lakes, ponds and oxbows. Late Pleistocene Ice Complex deposits underlie the main part of Sobo-Sise. This study focuses exclusively on Ice Complex terrain, which comprises a size of 319 km².
Figure 21: Sobo-Sise Island in the eastern Lena Delta with Ice Complex uplands and surrounding floodplains. Thermokarst features are clearly visible on the Ice Complex surface. A histogram stretch was applied in order to highlight the
differences of reflectance between floodplains and Ice Complex uplands (Source: RapidEye, Channels 5-3-2).
Regional setting and study site
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According to their origin as an accumulation plain in the foreland of the Kharaulakh Ridge, the Ice Complex deposits form uplands with homogeneous elevations between 25 - 35 m a.r.l. (max. elevation: 39.2 m a.r.l.). These deposits show a very high absolute ice content of 80 – 90 %. They consist of thick ice wedges, with a maximum depth of 20 m and width up to 5 m, and bulky peat inclusions. The subsurface structure of the Ice Complex is well demonstrated on a nearly vertical exposure at the northern tip of Sobo-Sise, where the Sardakhskaya Channel hits the Ice Complex and leads to massive thermal river erosion (Figure 22). In contrast to other Ice Complex sites, no underlying fluvial sands are present at this spot, which is a result from tectonic subsidence of the Ice Complex islands in the eastern Lena Delta as described in Sec.
3.1.2 (Schwamborn et al., 2002).
Various types of permafrost degradation exist on Sobo-Sise. The island shows the highest number of lakes among all Ice Complex islands in the Lena River Delta. Morgenstern et al.
(2011) reported 841 major lakes (> 900 m²), covering 32.2 % of the total island surface. They occur on the Yedoma uplands as well as in the broad alasses and can exceed a size of 3 km².
The alasses, which cover 27.2 % of the island total area, dissect the landscape into several distinct Yedoma uplands.
Figure 22: Ice Complex outcrop at the northern tip of Sobo-Sise. During higher water levels, the Sardakhskaya Channel forms a thermo-erosional niche, which favours massive block failure at the bluff. Note the high ice content and the bowl-shaped peat layers on top (image by A. Morgenstern 2014).
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3.2.2 Study sites on Sobo-Sise
On Sobo-Sise, two sites on Ice Complex terrain were chosen during the expedition in August 2014 for the study on controlling factors of thermal erosion. A broad corridor (ca. 9 km) of coalesced alasses separates the two Yedoma uplands into a western and northern area of interest (in the following Sobo West and Sobo North) (Figure 21).
Sobo West comprises a size of 5.23 km² with an absolute altitude difference of 30.5 m within the study site. The Lena River erodes the northern margin thereby creating a steep bluff with prominent baydjarakhs. The northeastern and eastern boundary of the study site is marked by a moderate slope from the Yedoma uplands towards a flat alas floor (max.elev. 3-5 m a.r.l.).
The watersheds of the investigated streams delineate the southern and western borders of the study site.
The second study site Sobo North is situated at the northeastern tip of Sobo-Sise. Sobo North is bounded from its westernmost until its northernmost point by a floodplain with elevations between 1 and 3 m a.r.l.. The Lena River forms a 1.6 km long vertical bluff from the northern tip until the easternmost point of the study site. The watersheds of the streams draining from the Ice Complex into the Lena River delineate the eastern and southern margins of the study site. With approximately 2 km², the size of Sobo North is less than half than that of Sobo West, whereas the maximum elevation difference within the study site is the same (31 m).
Material and methods
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4 Material and methods
The methodological framework to address the aim of this work contains
I. Field work to characterize the study sites and map erosional features (Sec. 4.1)
II. Generation of a high-resolution DEM and orthorectified satellite images on the basis of GeoEye-2 stereo satellite imagery (Sec. 4.2);
III. GIS-based mapping of thermo-erosional features and determination of potentially influencing environmental parameters (Sec. 4.3);
IV. Statistical modeling of controlling factors for thermal erosion using logistic regression and generation of susceptibility maps (Sec. 4.4).
Field work
•Definition of the study sites
•Mapping of erosional features
•GCP collection
Raw data processing
•DEM generation & editing
•Orthorectification of GeoEye-1 image pairs
GIS dataset
•Mapping of thermoerosional features
•Deviation of influencing parameters
Statistical modeling
•Detection of decisive factors for erosion via logistic regression
•Generation of susceptibilty maps
•Validation
Figure 23: Overview of the methodological approach applied in this study.
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