Benjamin Jones, Ph.D. (Former Employee)
Science and Products
Monitoring Thermokarst on the Landscapes of Northern Alaska
Permafrost – the thick layer of permanently frozen soil found in Arctic regions – has been thawing rapidly over the past century due to climate change. When permafrost thaws unevenly, it produces thermokarst landscapes, irregular surfaces of small hills interspersed with hollows. The processes that produce thermokarst can lead to significant changes within the surrounding ecosystems, altering...
Geometric and material variability influences stress states relevant to coastal permafrost bluff failure
Scientific knowledge and engineering tools for predicting coastal erosion are largely confined to temperate climate zones that are dominated by non-cohesive sediments. The pattern of erosion exhibited by the ice-bonded permafrost bluffs in Arctic Alaska, however, is not well explained by these tools. Investigation of the oceanographic, thermal,...
Thomas, Matthew A.; Mota, Alejandro; Jones, Benjamin M.; Choens, R. Charles; Frederick, Jennifer M.; Bull, Diana L. Spatiotemporal remote sensing of ecosystem change and causation across Alaska
Contemporary climate change in Alaska has resulted in amplified rates of press and pulse disturbances that drive ecosystem change with significant consequences for socio‐environmental systems. Despite the vulnerability of Arctic and boreal landscapes to change, little has been done to characterize landscape change and associated drivers across...
Pastick, Neal J.; Jorgenson, M. Torre; Goetz, Scott J.; Jones, Benjamin M.; Wylie, Bruce K.; Minsley, Burke J.; Genet, Hélène; Knight, Joseph F.; Swanson, David K.; Jorgenson, Janet C. A decade of remotely sensed observations highlight complex processes linked to coastal permafrost bluff erosion in the Arctic
Eroding permafrost coasts are indicators and integrators of changes in the Arctic System as they are susceptible to the combined effects of declining sea ice extent, increases in open water duration, more frequent and impactful storms, sea-level rise, and warming permafrost. However, few observation sites in the Arctic have yet to link decadal-...
Jones, Benjamin M.; Farquharson, Louise M.; Baughman, Carson; Buzard, Richard M.; Arp, Christopher D.; Grosse, Guido; Bull, Diana L.; Günther, Frank; Nitze, Ingmar; Urban, Frank; Kasper, Jeremy L.; Frederick, Jennifer M.; Thomas, Matthew A.; Jones, Craig; Mota, Alejandro; Dallimore, Scott; Tweedie, Craig E.; Maio, Christopher V.; Mann, Daniel H.; Richmond, Bruce M.; Gibbs, Ann E.; Xiao, Ming; Sachs, Torsten; Iwahana, Go; Kanevskiy, Mikhail Z.; Romanovsky, Vladimir E. Remotely sensing the morphometrics and dynamics of a cold region dune field using historical aerial photography and airborne LiDAR data
This study uses an airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) survey, historical aerial photography and historical climate data to describe the character and dynamics of the Nogahabara Sand Dunes, a sub-Arctic dune field in interior Alaska’s discontinuous permafrost zone. The Nogahabara Sand Dunes consist of a 43-km2 area of active...
Baughman, Carson; Jones, Benjamin M.; Bodony, Karin L.; Mann, Daniel H.; Larsen, Christopher F.; Himmelstoss, Emily A.; Smith, Jeremy PeRL: A circum-Arctic Permafrost Region Pond and Lake database
Ponds and lakes are abundant in Arctic permafrost lowlands. They play an important role in Arctic wetland ecosystems by regulating carbon, water, and energy fluxes and providing freshwater habitats. However, ponds, i.e., waterbodies with surface areas smaller than 1. 0 × 104 m2, have not been inventoried on global and regional scales. The...
Muster, Sina; Roth, Kurt; Langer, Moritz; Lange, Stephan; Cresto Aleina, Fabio; Bartsch, Annett; Morgenstern, Anne; Grosse, Guido; Jones, Benjamin M.; Sannel, A.B.K.; Sjoberg, Ylva; Gunther, Frank; Andresen, Christian; Veremeeva, Alexandra; Lindgren, Prajna R.; Bouchard, Frédéric; Lara, Mark J.; Fortier, Daniel; Charbonneau, Simon; Virtanen, Tarmo A.; Hugelius, Gustaf; Palmtag, J.; Siewert, Matthias B.; Riley, William J.; Koven, Charles; Boike, Julia Landsat-based trend analysis of lake dynamics across northern permafrost regions
Lakes are a ubiquitous landscape feature in northern permafrost regions. They have a strong impact on carbon, energy and water fluxes and can be quite responsive to climate change. The monitoring of lake change in northern high latitudes, at a sufficiently accurate spatial and temporal resolution, is crucial for understanding the underlying...
Nitze, Ingmar; Grosse, Guido; Jones, Benjamin M.; Arp, Christopher D.; Ulrich, Mathias; Federov, Alexander; Veremeeva, Alexandra Younger-Dryas cooling and sea-ice feedbacks were prominent features of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in Arctic Alaska
Declining sea-ice extent is currently amplifying climate warming in the Arctic. Instrumental records at high latitudes are too short-term to provide sufficient historical context for these trends, so paleoclimate archives are needed to better understand the functioning of the sea ice-albedo feedback. Here we use the oxygen isotope values of wood...
Gaglioti, Benjamin V.; Mann, Daniel H.; Wooller, Matthew J.; Jones, Benjamin M.; Wiles, Gregory C.; Groves, Pamela; Kunz, Michael L.; Baughman, Carson; Reanier, Richard E. A lake-centric geospatial database to guide research and inform management decisions in an Arctic watershed in northern Alaska experiencing climate and land-use changes
Lakes are dominant and diverse landscape features in the Arctic, but conventional land cover classification schemes typically map them as a single uniform class. Here, we present a detailed lake-centric geospatial database for an Arctic watershed in northern Alaska. We developed a GIS dataset consisting of 4362 lakes that provides information on...
Jones, Benjamin M.; Arp, Christopher D.; Whitman, Matthew S.; Nigro, Debora A.; Nitze, Ingmar; Beaver, John; Gadeke, Anne; Zuck, Callie; Liljedahl, Anna K.; Daanen, Ronald; Torvinen, Eric; Fritz, Stacey; Grosse, Guido Arctic Research Plan: FY2017-2021
The United States is an Arctic nation—Americans depend on the Arctic for biodiversity and climate regulation and for natural resources. America’s Arctic—Alaska—is at the forefront of rapid climate, environmental, and socio-economic changes that are testing the resilience and sustainability of communities and ecosystems. Research to increase...
Starkweather, Sandy; Jeffries, Martin O; Stephenson, Simon; Anderson, Rebecca D.; Jones, Benjamin M.; Loehman, Rachel A.; von Biela, Vanessa R. Impacts of shore expansion and catchment characteristics on lacustrine thermokarst records in permafrost lowlands, Alaska Arctic Coastal Plain
Arctic lowland landscapes have been modified by thermokarst lake processes throughout the Holocene. Thermokarst lakes form as a result of ice-rich permafrost degradation, and they may expand over time through thermal and mechanical shoreline erosion. We studied proximal and distal sedimentary records from a thermokarst lake located on the Arctic...
Lenz, Josefine; Jones, Benjamin M.; Wetterich, Sebastian; Tjallingii, Rik; Fritz, Michael; Arp, Christopher D.; Rudaya, Natalia; Grosse, Guido Spatial distribution of thermokarst terrain in Arctic Alaska
In landscapes underlain by ice-rich permafrost, the development of thermokarst landforms can have drastic impacts on ecosystem processes and human infrastructure. Here we describe the distribution of thermokarst landforms in the continuous permafrost zone of Arctic Alaska, analyze linkages to the underlying surficial geology, and discuss the...
Farquharson, Louise; Mann, Dan H; Grosse, Guido; Jones, Benjamin M.; Romanovsky, Vladimir Arctic sea ice decline contributes to thinning lake ice trend in northern Alaska
Field measurements, satellite observations, and models document a thinning trend in seasonal Arctic lake ice growth, causing a shift from bedfast to floating ice conditions. September sea ice concentrations in the Arctic Ocean since 1991 correlate well (r = +0.69,p < 0.001) to this lake regime shift. To understand how and to...
Alexeev, Vladimir; Arp, Christopher D.; Jones, Benjamin M.; Cai, Lei
Software to Process and Preserve Legacy Magnetotelluric Data
Software to Process and Preserve Legacy Magnetotelluric Data from circa 1990 truck-mounted cross power and time series files in ASCII format.