Description: Over the past ten years the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) has been conducting research along the coast of the Canadian Beaufort Sea. The capabilities and research efforts have been expanding ever since, resulting in the application of TerraSAR-X imagery for investigations into land cover changes, and subsidence. The AWI sees great potential for future applications of radar imagery at regional scales, along with the ground validation in a remote yet climatically sensitive region. The capacities offered by the TerraSAR-X platform present a unique possibility to enhance and complement existing research conducted by the AWI based on remotely sensed optical data (e.g. SPOT, GEOEYE, etc.). Possible research directions involve change tracking of permafrost degradation (e.g. thermokarst features such as retrogressive thaw slumps and lakes), quantification of coastal erosion, vegetation community change, vegetation structure, surface water and surface moisture investigations, and fast ice mapping. In addition, the applicability of TerraSAR-X data for investigations into wetland- and tundra vegetation, and land disturbances would be investigated. These investigations would make use of the TSX stripmap and scansar mode acquisitions already available in the archive, and future TSX acquisitions in 2013.

Description: In June 2014, more than 75 Early Career Researchers (ECRs) attended the ECR Workshop 2014, a one-day event held prior to the 4th European Conference on Permafrost (EUCOP) in Évora, Portugal. One of the goals of this workshop was to elaborate future avenues of permafrost research from an ECR perspective during a forum with participants from various disciplines and countries. The outcome of this workshop is a ?Permafrost Priority Sheet?, which will be presented to the International Permafrost Association (IPA) and will contribute to the establishment of research priorities leading up to into the 3rd International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP III) in 2015 in Toyama, Japan. This presentation will highlight some of the results that were obtained during the workshop, in a similar fashion as what will be presented at ICARP III. Additionally, it will focus on the organisation of the forum, the consultation process and the lessons learned from the overall experience. The results from this workshop took the form of research questions, from which five questions were elected by the participants as the most relevant at identifying gaps that need to be addressed in permafrost research. The broad range of topics include, engineering, remote sensing, traditional knowledge, massive ice, permafrost distribution, and more. Overall, these topics underscore the wide variety of specialties of the participants as well as the need for further research across a spectrum of permafrost-related topics. To date, this operation has been a success largely due to the extensive collaboration between the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS), Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN), and the ECR organisations of inter-disciplinary projects Changing Permafrost in the Arctic and its Global Effects in the 21st Century (PAGE-21) and Arctic Development and Adaptation to Permafrost in Transition (ADAPT). This workshop was an ECR initiative from the beginning to the end and is a great example of collaboration between National and International organizations. It also shows how ECR projects can be conveyed using existing networks and events in order to broadcast their opinions and increase their contribution to the future of Arctic science.

Description: The Canadian Yukon Coast is an ice-rich permafrost coast. This is a fragile ecosystem and reacts strongly to changing environmental conditions. Retrogressive Thaw Slumps are thermal erosion features and are commonly found along this coast. They release large quantities of sediment and organic material to the nearshore zone. Arctic temperatures are projected to increase over the next century. As a result these Retrogressive Thaw Slumps are predicted to become more active and therefore release greater quantities of sediment, organic carbon and nutrients. However, a thorough understanding is lacking of the climatic forces of the erosion process of Retrogressive Thaw Slumps. In the summers of 2012 and 2013 research was conducted in a Retrogressive Thaw Slump on Herschel Island off the Yukon Coast in North-West Canada. The thawing ice-rich headwall measures over 30 m in height and 440 m in width, and undergoes erosion at a rate exceeding 9 m/yr. Two weather stations were erected, one within the close vicinity of the thawing headwall and one above the Retrogressive Thaw Slump, on the undisturbed tundra. These were measuring incoming solar radiation, temperature, precipitation and wind speed determining the microclimatic effects on the thawing of the headwall. A cut-throat flume was installed in the outflow of the Retrogressive Thaw Slump, measuring the meltwater-sediment discharge. Meltwater-sediment samples were collected in the outflow on an hourly basis and tested for pH, conductivity, sediment and organic carbon content. Data of the cut throat flume and weather stations were analysed. They show that discharge from the Retrogressive Thaw Slump is characterized by a strong intra-seasonal, as well as inter- and intra-diurnal variability. This correlates with changing microclimatic conditions, specifically temperature and precipitation

Description: Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) are spectacular lateral thermokarst features occurring in ice-rich permafrost regions. They develop along streams or coastlines and expand inland to form landslide-like U-shaped scars exceeding a kilometer size in selected locations. These slumps are a major source of sediment, organic carbon and nutrients that have a large effect on the aquatic environment. The consequences of the occurrence of RTS, which have been shown to occur at increased frequencies in the Arctic are not well understood, mostly because they have only been studied over the past ten years. The impact of RTS sediment delivery on coastal ecosystems is even less known, even though RTS contribute quantities of sediment sometimes greater than coastal erosion itself. In this study, we present the results of a systemic multidisciplinary study attempting to understand the structure, the evolution and the fate of RTS on Herschel Island, Yukon Territory, in the southern Canadian Beaufort Sea. Herschel Island for the exceptionally ice-rich nature of the permafrost and the occurrence of multiple RTS. We use information stemming from cryostratigraphic sampling in the ice headwall of the RTS, from cores collected above the headwall and in the slump floor, from sediment and water samples collected in the slump outflow, from timelapse photography, from outflow channel discharge measurements and from geophysics (mostly Direct Current and Capacitive Coupled Resistivity) to describe the structure of the slump. We emphasize the role of ground ice distribution, sea water vicinity and sensible and radiative heat input in dictating the pace at which slump initiate, stabilize and re-activate. We compare this information to past knowledge on slumps to emphasize the transient nature of slump occurrence in the arctic coastal zone and the existence of ?pulses? of slump activity with potentially important impacts on the nearshore ecosystem.