Tabea Rettelbach

Tabea Rettelbach is a Researcher in the Permafrost Research department at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), part of the Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems division. Her work focuses on understanding permafrost dynamics, climate change impacts, and environmental monitoring in Arctic and boreal regions. She specializes in remote sensing techniques, field expeditions, and geospatial analysis to study permafrost thaw, thermokarst processes, and landscape evolution.

Her research integrates high-resolution aerial imagery, LiDAR data, and machine learning to analyze permafrost terrain, such as ice-wedge polygons and thaw ponds. She has contributed to projects like the Perma-X expeditions in Alaska and studies on thermokarst lake life cycles in Arctic Alaska. Key areas of interest include topographic controls on permafrost thaw, albedo measurements in boreal forests, and the application of graph theory to hydrologic networks.

Rettelbach collaborates on international initiatives, leveraging multi-source data (e.g., satellite, drone, and in-situ measurements) to model climate-driven changes in permafrost ecosystems. Her work emphasizes bridging field observations with advanced computational methods to address climate change challenges in polar regions.