Browsing by Author "Kukkonen, Tommi"
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Kukkonen, Tommi (2020)The Arctic is warming with an increased pace, and it can affect ecosystems, infrastructure and communities. By studying periglacial landforms and processes, and using improved methods, more knowledge on these changing environmental conditions and their impacts can be obtained. The aim of this thesis is to map studied landforms and predict their probability of occurrence in the circumpolar region utilizing different modelling methods. Periglacial environments occur in high latitudes and other cold regions. These environments host permafrost, which is frozen ground and responds effectively to climate warming, and underlays areas that host many landform types. Therefore, landform monitoring and modelling in permafrost regions under changing climate can provide information about the ongoing changes in the Arctic and landform distributions. Here four landform/process types were mapped and studied: patterned ground, pingos, thermokarst activity and solifluction. The study consisted of 10 study areas across the circumpolar Arctic that were mapped for their landforms. The study utilized GLM, GAM and GBM analyses in determining landform occurrences in the Arctic based on environmental variables. Model calibration utilized logit link function, and evaluation explained the deviance value. Data was sampled to evaluation and calibration sets to assess prediction abilities. The predictive accuracy of the models was assessed using ROC/AUC values. Thermokarst activity proved to be most abundant in studied areas, whereas solifluction activity was most scarce. Pingos were discovered evenly throughout studied areas, and patterned ground activity was absent in some areas but rich in others. Climate variables and mean annual ground temperature had the biggest influence in explaining landform occurrence throughout the circumpolar region. GBM proved to be the most accurate and had the best predictive performance. The results show that mapping and modelling in mesoscale is possible, and in the future, similar studies could be utilized in monitoring efforts regarding global change and in studying environmental and periglacial landform/process interactions.
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Kukkonen, Tommi (2022)Eutrophication and harmful substances of anthropogenic origin threaten the state of the Baltic Sea and especially its geochemistry and oxygen levels near the seafloor. Water exchange between the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean can affect oxygen circulation and sedimentation rates, but they are considered very sporadic and it is unclear how the water circulation and flow rates affect element concentrations and sediment deposition in the near seafloor environments. One of the less studied basins is the Western Gulf of Finland and its seafloor environment. During the 2019 voyage, the seafloor located to the south of the city of Hanko was investigated through bathymetric sounding tools and other measurements in which element concentration and sediment deposition rate data was acquired. The sounding revealed a large channel cutting the seafloor which was hypothesized to influence the nearbottom conditions. The obtained data consisted of samples from 13 short, 40 cm sediment cores which were analysed for 137Cs activity, organic content, and grain size distribution. The goal of the thesis was to determine the intensity of water exchange taking place in the seabed channels between the mid-Baltic Sea and the Western Gulf of Finland and investigate the effect of the seafloor channel and flow rates on sediment and element deposition, their relationships, and how they affect the overall conditions in the study area. These relationships were analyzed through spatial and statistical methods by utilizing GIS-tools to interpolate the data obtained from the study locations by using the Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) method, and by multielement analyses in the R-environment, namely Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Regression (PLS) to analyze grain size and element concentration correlations and combine them with obtained flow rate data. The results showed strong correlation in flow rate intensities between the Western Gulf of Finland and the mid-Baltic Sea, and they are strongly linked with sedimentation and element deposition rates. However, no long-term trend was identified for the seafloor channel velocity frequencies. The Cs-activity shows stronger sedimentation activity on the western side of the seafloor channel. The overall element and sediment deposition in the study area was largely controlled by monthly and seasonal current velocity fluctuations among other processes. The element concentration comparison showed weakened oxygen conditions in the study area with increased eutrophication and carbon burial since the 1950s. The principal Component Analysis showed smaller grain sizes (0.15 - 2 mm) having a stronger influence on the datasets with Mo, N, and C providing largest variation in the data. Interpolation showed oxygen, pH, and H2S to have more fluctuation in the study area, which can indicate changes in the vertical gradients in each sample point. It could also be determined that other measured concentrations, such as temperature, turbidity, and salinity do not respond very sensitively to water inflow fluctuations or sedimentation rate changes. The results indicate that harmful substances and eutrophication are most likely going to increase in the near-bottom environment in the Western Gulf of Finland, contributed by anthropogenic activity. Water exchange is likely to become more and more uneven, thus affecting the flow rate effects to the sediment deposition in the Baltic Sea. Further studies are needed to link these processes to large-scale global changes and the general state of changes happening in the Baltic Sea and its surrounding areas. The seafloor of the Western Gulf of Finland could also be studied further to gain a better understanding of longer timescale changes on the seafloor channel currents, and element and sediment deposition rates.
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