Photo: How the Arctic lands are evolving

A newly released pan-Arctic map showing areas vulnerable to change. The map, published last week in Nature Communications, shows where frozen soil could collapse creating lakes, wetlands and small hills, called thermokarst landscapes. Red areas on the map indicate where hilly landscapes could likely form, green areas are where wetlands could likely form, and blue areas show where lakes could likely form. “This map is a first step to answer how the landscape will change with the thawing of permafrost in a warming climate,” Vladimir Romanovsky, co-author of the paper and a geophysicist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, said on eos.org. “This is the big picture, it is useful as a general idea of what we should expect on a circumpolar scale.” (MAP/OLEFELDT ET AL)