Striped Pattern Over Russian Arctic Baffles NASA, What Is This Weird Topographical Feature?

The land ripples in unexpected patterns near the Markha River, in Russia's Siberian Arctic region, and NASA is not yet sure what it actually is.

Researchers from the space agency recently posted satellite images of the striped land on the NASA Earth Observatory website. The NASA team shared about noticing a post on Twitter last February 2020, saying how the satellite image turned "into a scientific detective story and an unresolved case."

Striped Patterns on the Land Near the Siberian Markha River

(Photo: inthecloud Twitter Page (Landsat)

A Topographical Puzzle

The puzzling picture, taken by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) onboard the Landsat 8 satellite over a couple of years, illustrates the rippling land patterns on both sides of the Markha River. The stripes in question are an alternate of dark and white lines on the northern section of the Central Siberian Plateau.

The NASA Earth Observatory post describes the presence of "tight loops" on parts with steeper hills, running in a long and winding path downhill. Visible across all four seasons, these ripples are notably more prominent during the winter, when layers of snow further emphasize the contrast between the light and dark sections of the stripe. Furthermore, these stripes start fading as they crawl closer to the Markha riverbanks.

Generally, as the mysterious stripes move towards lower elevations and lower latitudes, they start to "disappear." Scientists have offered a couple of conflicting theories as to what caused this weird topographical feature.

Patterned Ground and Other Possible Explanations

One plausible explanation is based on the Siberian region's icy nature. Particularly, this part of the Central Siberian Plateau is covered in permafrost for almost 90 percent of the time, according to NASA. The remaining 10 percent accounts for the instances when the permafrost temporarily thaws. Land regions regularly exposed to a cycle of frost and thaw over and over again, have been found to take round or striped patterns called "patterned ground."

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In fact, an instance of the phenomenon has been reported in a January 2003 study titled "Self-Organization of Sorted Patterned Ground," published in the journal Science. The formation of these "self-organizing" patterns, according to the study, occurs when ice lenses create ice lenses that sort stones and soil. Then, stones are supposedly transported towards stone-rich domains, sections of the land squeezed and confined as the freezing soil expands.

Another instance of patterned ground, detailed in the article "Stone circles: form and soil Kinematics" appearing in the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A, describes the stone circles of Svalbard in Norway. This phenomenon occurs on smaller scales compared to those observed in the Siberian plateau.

A third possible theory, according to the NASA Earth Observation release, is erosion. US Geological Survey geologist Thomas Crafford explains that the striped pattern is similar to an observed behavior among sedimentary rocks called "layer cake geology." Crafford explains that this happens when water - from snowmelt or rainfall - flows downhill, eroding and moving fragments of sedimentary rocks into piles. In the Siberian stripes, the darker sections are the steeper slabs with the lighter ones are the flatter sections. This also appears consistent with the behavior of the Markha River area in the winter since white snow tends to accumulate more on flatter areas instead of the steeper ones, further accentuating the contrast.