Soil moisture (SM) products presently available in permafrost regions, especially on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP), hardly meet the demands of evaluating and modeling climatic, hydrological, and ecological processes, due to their significant bias and low spatial resolution. This study developed an algorithm to generate high-spatial-resolution SM during the thawing season using Sentinel-1 (S1) and Sentinel-2 (S2) temporal data in the permafrost environment. This algorithm utilizes the seasonal backscatter differences to reduce the effect of surface roughness and uses the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the normalized difference moisture index (NDMI) to characterize vegetation contribution. Then, the SM map with a grid spacing of 50 m × 50 m in the hinterland of the QTP with an area of 505 km × 246 km was generated. The results were independently validated based on in situ data from active layer monitoring sites. It shows that this algorithm can retrieve SM well in the study area. The coefficient of determination (R²) and root-mean-square error (RMSE) are 0.82 and 0.06 m³/m³, respectively. This study analyzed the SM distribution of different vegetation types: the alpine swamp meadow had the largest SM of 0.26 m³/m³, followed by the alpine meadow (0.23), alpine steppe (0.2), and alpine desert (0.16), taking the Tuotuo River basin as an example. We also found a significantly negative correlation between the coefficient of variation (CV) and SM in the permafrost area, and the variability of SM is higher in drier environments and lower in wetter environments. The comparison with ERA5-Land, GLDAS, and ESA CCI showed that the proposed method can provide more spatial details and achieve better performance in permafrost areas on QTP. The results also indicated that the developed algorithm has the potential to be applied in the entire permafrost regions on the QTP.

Peatlands are major natural carbon pool in terrestrial ecosystems globally and are essential to a variety of fields, including global ecology, hydrology, and ecosystem services. Under the context of climate change, the management and conservation of peatlands has become a topic of international concern. Nevertheless, few studies have yet systematized the overall international dynamics of existing peatland research. In this study, based on an approach integrating bibliometrics and a literature review, we systematically analyzed peatland research from a literature perspective. Alongside traditional bibliometric analyses (e.g., number of publications, research impact, and hot areas), recent top keywords in peatland research were found, including ‘oil palm’, ‘tropical peatland’, ‘permafrost’, and so on. Furthermore, six hot topics of peatland research were identified: (1) peatland development and the impacts and degradations, (2) the history of peatland development and factors of formation, (3) chemical element contaminants in peatlands, (4) tropical peatlands, (5) peat adsorption and its humic acids, and (6) the influence of peatland conservation on the ecosystem. In addition, this review found that the adverse consequences of peatland degradation in the context of climate change merit greater attention, that peatland-mapping techniques suitable for all regions are lacking, that a unified global assessment of carbon stocks in peatlands urgently needs to be established, spanning all countries, and that a reliable system for assessing peatland-ecosystem services needs to be implemented expeditiously. In this study, we argued that enhanced integration in research will bridge knowledge gaps and facilitate the systematic synthesis of peatlands as complex systems, which is an imperative need.

Surface heat sources play a critical role in shaping meteorological conditions and permafrost dynamics on the Tibetan Plateau. To better understand surface heat source variability in the permafrost region, multiyear observational data from an isolated permafrost site and a continuous permafrost site were used to analyse the variability. The results indicated that the surface heat source at the isolated permafrost site remained relatively stable, whereas that at the continuous permafrost site increased significantly, at a rate of approximately 2.2 Wm⁻²yr⁻¹. The proportions of sensible and latent heat fluxes in the surface heat source budget varied with the season. Overall, the proportion of latent heat flux was greater than that of sensible heat flux in summer and autumn, whereas the proportion of sensible heat flux was greater than that of latent heat flux in winter and spring. The peak proportion for both fluxes exceeded 80%. A random forest model effectively captured the variations in the surface heat source. And the machine learning simulation indicated that soil temperature, downward shortwave radiation and albedo were identified as major contributors to the surface heat source, collectively accounting for more than 88% of the overall variability at both sites. The impacts of snow cover on the surface heat source varied with intensity. The increasing trend of the surface heat source was closely related to climate warming in autumn and winter. A significant but weak positive correlation was observed between vegetation and the surface heat source.