Erik Schytt Mannerfelt

University of Oslo · Department of Geosciences

Most small land-terminating glaciers in Svalbard have experienced large recession since the Little Ice Age (LIA) and today are thin, cold, and largely inactive. This likely contrasts to their LIA conditions, but the observational record from that time is sparse. We investigate the evolution of five small glaciers in central Nordenskiöld Land, Svalb...

We present a practically simple methodology for tracking glacier surge onset and evolution using interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) coherence. Detecting surges early and monitoring their build-up is interesting for a multitude of scientific and safety-related aspects. We show that InSAR coherence maps allow the detection of surge-rela...

Permafrost carbon, stored in frozen organic matter across vast Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, represents a substantial and increasingly vulnerable carbon reservoir. As global temperatures rise, the accelerated thawing of permafrost releases greenhouse gases, exacerbating climate change. However, freshly thawed permafrost carbon may also experience...

Plain Language Summary Arctic and sub‐arctic regions on the southern border of the permafrost zone often feature peatlands with a patchy surface of peat mounds, thaw ponds, and surrounding fens. As the permafrost underneath peat mounds thaws, these areas transform and can change their emission or uptake of greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane. Ass...

Permafrost and glaciers in the high Arctic form an impermeable ‘cryospheric cap’ that traps a large reservoir of subsurface methane, preventing it from reaching the atmosphere. Cryospheric vulnerability to climate warming is making releases of this methane possible. On Svalbard, where air temperatures are rising more than two times faster than the...

Using global Sentinel-1 radar backscatter data, we systematically map the locations of glaciers with surge-type activity during 2017–22. Patterns of pronounced increases or decreases in the strongest backscatter between two winter seasons often indicate large changes in glacier crevassing, which we treat here as a sign of surge-type activity. Valid...

Extensive regions in the permafrost zone are projected to become climatically unsuitable to sustain permafrost peatlands over the next century, suggesting transformations in these landscapes that can leave large amounts of permafrost carbon vulnerable to post-thaw decomposition. We present three years of eddy covariance measurements of CH4 and CO2...

Debris flows threaten communities in mountain regions worldwide. Combining modern photogrammetric processing with autonomous unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) flights at sub-weekly intervals allows mapping of sediment dynamics in a debris flow catchment. This provides important information for sediment disposition that pre-conditions the catchment fo...

The monitoring of glaciers in Switzerland has a long tradition, yet glacier changes during the 20th century are only known through sparse observations. Here, we estimate a halving of Swiss glacier volumes between 1931 and 2016 by mapping historical glacier elevation changes at high resolution. Our analysis relies on a terrestrial image archive know...

The monitoring of Earth’s and planetary surface elevations at larger and finer scales is rapidly progressing through the increasing availability and resolution of digital elevation models (DEMs). Surface elevation observations are being used across an expanding range of fields to study topographical attributes and their changes over time, notably i...

The future climate evolution and the impact it might have on a repository for radioactive waste is important when assessing the long-term safety. In a project funded by SSM (Holmlund et al. 2016), bathymetric data from the Southern Quark area between Sweden and Åland, provided by the Swedish Maritime Administration, were analysed, as well as terres...

Debris flows threaten communities in mountain regions worldwide. Combining modern photogrammetric processing with autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flights at sub-weekly intervals allows mapping of sediment dynamics in a debris flow catchment. This provides important information for sediment disposition that pre-conditions the catchment for...

The monitoring of glaciers in Switzerland has a long tradition, yet glacier changes during the 20th century are only known through sparse observations. Here, we estimate a halving of Swiss glacier volumes between 1931 and 2016 by mapping historical glacier elevation changes at high resolution. Our analysis relies on a terrestrial image archive know...

The distal deposition of tephra from explosive volcanism has the potential to geochronologically constrain sedi-mentary archives and landforms. With this technique, we constrain a Late Glacial glacier re-advance on Svalbard and suggest that glacioisostatic emergence rates during the Younger Dryas chronozone were at least three times greater than pr...

Photogrammetric reconstructions of the Aldegondabreen glacier on Svalbard from 17 archival terrestrial oblique photographs taken in 1910 and 1911 reveal a past volume of 1373.7 ± 78.2 · 106 m3; almost five times greater than its volume in 2016. Comparisons to elevation data obtained from aerial and satellite imagery indicate a relatively unchanging...

This poster was published in relation to NGU's Vintermøte 2021, January 6th. The poster presents an overview of newly collected field data of the so far under-studied Eocene formation, Aspelintoppen Formation. Aerial imagery of over 1000 pictures of mountain top locations with Aspelintoppen Formation outcrops adds to the sparse dataset which alre...

Observational and geomorphological records suggest that most glaciers on Svalbard reached their maximum Little Ice Age extents by means of surging. Furthermore, it seems to have happened within just a few decades, suggesting that the rapid concurrent changes in climate might have triggered this widespread surging. The specific precipitation and tem...

In Arctic alpine regions, glacio‐lacustrine environments respond sensitively to variations in climate conditions, impacting, for example,glacier extent and rendering former ice‐contact lakes into ice distal lakes and vice versa. Lakefloors may hold morphological records of past glacier extent, but remoteness and long periods of ice cover on such la...

Geodetic volume estimates of Storglaciären in Sweden suggest a 28% loss in total ice mass between 1910 and 2015. Terrestrial photographs from 1910 of Tarfala valley, where Storglaciären is situated, allow for an accurate reconstruction of the glacier's surface using Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry, which we used for past volume and mass estima...

This 10x10 DEM from late July 1910 is described by Holmlund and Holmlund (2019). It may be used for any non-commercial purposes.

Included are the mass change estimations from Holmlund and Holmlund (2019). The series values are expressed in kg w.e.

The processes associated with the release of CH4 and CO2 from sub-permafrost groundwaters are considered through a year-long monitoring investigation at a terrestrial seepage site in West Spitsbergen. The site is an open system pingo thought to be associated with the uplift of a former sea-floor pockmark in response to marked isostatic recovery of...

The ice summit of Kebnekaise is slowly melting down as a consequence of climate change. In August 2018 this peak, which for a long time has been the highest in Sweden, reached an elevation a few decimetres lower than the nearby situated northern summit in solid rock. It has become a symbol of the fragility of nature. Its areal extent and shape have...

Geodetic estimates of Storglaciären in Sweden suggest a 23% loss of its total ice mass between 1910 and 2015. Extensive photographic material since late 1800s exist from Tarfaladalen, the valley where Storglaciären is situated , and terrestrial photographs from 1910 allow for an accurate reconstruction of the glacier's surface using Structure-from-...

In 2012–2016, we digitalised about 10000 old photographs taken 1861-1980 on glaciers and alpine environments in Sweden and on Svalbard. Using the modern Structure from Motion photogrammetrical workflow, new quantitative measurements can be made on almost any image sequence, provided enough overlap is present. These include measurements of volume, t...

In 2012-2016 we have digitalized a large number of old photographs taken 1861-1980 on glaciers in Sweden and on Svalbard. Many of these photos were taken from cairns easily found today. In order to make use of these old data for quantitative analyses our project aimed at constructing digital terrain models and geo reference the old photos in a 3D c...