4 million lakes in ‘Lost Lakes’ map offer clues to Arctic permafrost

Researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute have built an interactive tool called Lost Lakes, mapping roughly 4 million Arctic lakes and tracking their changes since 2016. Because permafrost is buried and hard to measure directly, scientists use the lakes above it, which form or drain as the frozen ground beneath them thaws, as a visible proxy.

The stakes are bigger than cartography. Permafrost holds carbon accumulated over thousands of years, and thawing risks releasing it into the atmosphere, potentially accelerating the warming that caused the thaw in the first place. In one documented case, nearly 200 lakes in northwestern Alaska shrank abruptly in summer 2018 after an unusually warm winter.

The tool is described by its creators as free and usable by experts and non-experts alike, letting communities assess which regions sit on unstable, ice-rich ground versus firmer terrain, information relevant to where it's safe to build.

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