The potential of Citizen Science for mapping landscape change in Arctic permafrost regions

Abstract

Monitoring permafrost thaw in the Arctic is essential for assessing global climate change impact. Citizen science approaches can make a crucial contribution to this. In a case study using a micro-mapping methodology, visitors of an exhibition mapped polygonal soil patterns in satellite images of the Arctic. The evaluation of the collected data reveals that mapping such patterns poses a bigger challenge than more established task types, such as building detection. A simplification of the task using a binary detection approach increases the data quality of permafrost mapping. Citizen science shows great potential for permafrost research, although methods must be further tested.