Small Changes in the Arctic Landscape Become Clear From Above

The permafrost in the Arctic is melting while vegetation spreads. Researcher Matthias Siewert’s drone images show how climate change is slowly redrawing the landscape and how small changes grow larger over time. Siewert flies his drones over the same places in Abisko every year.

The images show how the permafrost in bogs is slowly thawing, releasing carbon that has long been bound in the soil. They also show how the vegetation is changing.

“I have six places where I fly regularly. Four of them are tundra areas where we check how the vegetation changes over time. The hypothesis is that it gets greener when it gets warmer,” says Siewerts, who is employed as an associate professor at Umeå University in Northern Sweden.

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