Changes in size distribution of lakes in the Nadym catchment, northern Russia

Because of climate change and resource development there is an ongoing increase in the attention directed towards high latitude areas. Over the last years, warming in the Arctic has accelerated quickly. The warming climate can possibly lead to thawing of ground ice, which in turn leads to alterations of the cryosphere. This can have a huge influence on the terrestrial hydrology of the Arctic and, more specifically, on the presence and distribution of lakes in arctic regions since both are coupled to subsurface ice. In this thesis data from remote sensing were used to look at the change in the size distribution of lakes for the Nadym catchment in northern Russia. The aim was to find out if there has been an increase or decrease in the number of lakes in the area over the past years. Results suggest that there were 229 lakes less (representing a 4% decrease) in 2007– 2009 compared to 1987, indicating that lakes are slowly disappearing. Also, the total lake surface area decreased with 5%. Almost half of the lakes that disappeared (49%) can be found among the smallest lakes ranging between 10–20 ha. In the entire catchment this size class was also found to be the class with by far the highest number of lakes.