Detection of tundra lake patterns on permafrost historical maps

Abstract

Greenhouse gas emissions from tundra lakes are a significant positive feedback of the atmosphere. Therefore, detailed knowledge of size distribution of tundra lakes in the Arctic region and their geometrical properties is potentially valuable in order to understand and accurately model the sources of methane emissions from boreal permafrost. In this paper we develop a new approach for computational image analysis of tundra lake patterns on historical maps, which accurately measures the perimeter and area of tundra lakes and calculates their fractal dimension and normal size distribution. We use this approach in order to test whether the size distributions of tundra lakes in the Arctic landscape follow the Pareto distribution or not. For the assessment, we utilize the historical maps of permafrost and detect the features of patterns geometry.