Annual Thaw Depths in Illisarvik, Northwest Territories

Summary

Thaw-depth data were collected annually in August from 21 August 1979 to 18 August 1999, from 400-m, 600-m, and tundra transects at Illisarvik lake, Richards Island, Northwest Territories, Canada. Coordinates are 69° 30' N, 134° 32' W. Data are in tab-delimited ASCII text format, and are available via FTP.

Citing These Data:

Burn, C. 2003. Annual Thaw Depths in Illisarvik, Northwest Territories. Boulder, CO: National Snow and Ice Data Center. Digital Media.

Overview Table

Table of Contents

1. Contacts and Acknowledgments:

Investigator(s) Name and Title:

Dr. Chris Burn
Department of Geography
Carleton University
1125 Colonel by Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
K2S 5B6  Canada

Technical Contact:

NSIDC User Services
National Snow and Ice Data Center
CIRES, 449 UCB
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0449  USA
phone: +1 303.492.6199
fax: +1 303.492.2468
form: Contact NSIDC User Services
e-mail: nsidc@nsidc.org

2. Detailed Data Description:

Format:

Data are in tab-delimited ASCII text format, listed by date (row) and sampling location (column). Column headers indicate benchmark numbers at 25-m intervals along the bottom of the lake in the following directions:

• NE-SW direction along a 600-m course ("ggd642_thawdepth_600m.txt")
• NW-SE direction along a 400-m course ("ggd642_thawdepth_400m.txt")
• E-W direction along a 600-m tundra course ("ggd642_thawdepth_tundra.txt")

Geographic coordinates of sites are not available. Empty fields indicate missing data.

Following is the first record of data from "ggd642_thawdepth_400m.txt":

Date (mm/dd/yy)	Year	#66	#67	#68	#69	#70	#71	#72	#73	#74	#75	#76	#77	#78	#79	#80	#81	#82	#83
08/21/79	1	39	43	67	79	83	49	46	52	60	50	60	98	74	102	146	158	169	60
	

Following is the first record of data from "ggd642_thawdepth_tundra.txt":

Date (mm/dd/yy)	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6	#7	#8	#9	#10	#11	#12	#13	#14	#15
8/18/83		63	33	35	51	43	41	39	41	46	39	30	50	47	50	34
	

File Naming Convention:

ggd642_thawdepth_400m.txt: Thaw depths (cm) along 400-m transect
ggd642_thawdepth_600m.txt: Thaw depths (cm) along 600-m transect
ggd642_thawdepth_tundra.txt: Thaw depths (cm) along tundra transect

File Size:

ggd642_thawdepth_400m.txt: 2 KB
ggd642_thawdepth_600m.txt: 2 KB
ggd642_thawdepth_tundra.txt: 1 KB

Spatial Coverage:

Data were collected from Illisarvik, 69° 30' N, 134° 32' W. Illisarvik is a small, drained tundra lake on Richards Island, 130 km north of Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canada, at the Beaufort Sea coast. Illisarvik is northern Canada's longest-running field experiment. The lake was drained on 13 August 1978, and field studies have been conducted there continuously since. Illisarvik is 600 m long by 300 m wide. Before drainage it was up to 5 m deep, but most of the lake was between 2 m to 3 m deep. Lake-ice thickness on Richards Island is less than 2 m, so most of the lake bottom was unfrozen throughout the year. In the middle of the lake, unfrozen ground extended to 32 m depth. Permafrost started to develop in lake sediments in winter 1978-79, following drainage (Burns 2003).

Temporal Coverage:

Data were collected once annually each August from 21 August 1979 to 18 August 1999.

3. References:

Burn, C. 2003. "About Illisarvik." The Illisarvik Bibliography. http://www.nwtresearch.com/illisarvik/about.asp. Accessed 12 May 2003.

Mackay, J., and C. Burns. 2002. The first 20 years (1978/79 to 1998/99) of ice-wedge growth at the Illisarvik experimental drained lake site, western Arctic coast, Canada. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 39: 95-111.

Mackay, J.R. 1982. Active layer growth, Illisarvik experimental drained lake site, Richards Island, Northwest Territories. In Current Research, Part A, Geological Survey of Canada, Paper 82-1A, pp. 123-126.

4. Document Information:

Document Creation Date:

May 2003

Document Revision Date:

May 2003

Document URL:

http://nsidc.org/data/docs/fgdc/ggd642_thawdepth_canada/index.html