Anna Liljedahl Ph.D.

  • Associate Scientist
Dr. Anna Liljedahl

Dr. Anna Liljedahl’s work is rooted in a life-long love of water and a deep sense of connection to Alaska’s environment and communities. Her research focuses on how climate change is altering the storage and movement of water in Arctic ecosystems. She has probed the impact of glacial melt and permafrost thawing on natural processes, like ponding and runoff, as well as built infrastructure, including hydropower. Dr. Liljedahl’s work combines field measurements with remote sensing data to produce high-resolution computer models at watershed scales.

left: Discharge measurements of streams near Toolik, North Slope, Alaska in late summer.

photo by Gerald V Frost

right: Maintenance of a repeater communication station for meteorological data in eastern Alaska Range in late summer.

photo by Anna Liljedahl

Through projects like the Permafrost Discovery Gateway, Dr. Liljedahl strives to expand access to information and to expedite knowledge-generation from big data to serve earth scientists and communities facing climate impacts.

Dr. Liljedahl fell in love with Alaska as an exchange student and currently resides in Homer, Alaska. She draws insight, inspiration, and joy from living in the community and ecosystem she studies. She enjoys local food culture, hiking, and skijoring with her pet husky.

There’s flood insurance, but no insurance for permafrost thaw. People’s houses are literally falling over and sewer pipes breaking. When it comes to climate change, we need some big ideas and out-of-the-box thinking.

Projects

Arctic T-SLIP

Tsunamigenic SLope Instabilities Partnership: Understanding and preparing for landslide-generated tsunamis in permafrost and glacier regions
installation of the meteorological station

Caribou Hills South Meteorological Station

For the collection of baseline meteorological and soil data representing an ecosystem type that has received little attention in Alaska
Aerial photo of arctic tundra wetlands

Permafrost Discovery Gateway

Improving accessibility of Arctic permafrost information
Alaskan salmon tagged and measured

Keeping Cool?

Is heat stress influencing the success of sub-Arctic spawning Chinook salmon in Alaska?

Selected Publications

A multi-objective comparison of CNN architectures in Arctic human-built infrastructure mapping from sub-meter resolution satellite imagery

Manos, E., C. Witharana, A.S. Perera, & A.K. Liljedahl. (2023). International Journal of Remote Sensing.

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Diminishing lake area across the northern permafrost zone

Webb, E.E. & A.K. Liljedahl. (2023). Nature Geoscience.

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