Winter roads are the lifeline of the socio economy in the Pan Arctic region, providing seasonal pathways for various transportation scenarios that rely on different vehicles. However, due to the fact that the identification of potential winter road areas is based on a relatively single and fixed environmental threshold, it is impossible to quantify the carrying capacity of potential winter road areas. Currently, there is still a lack of graded data on the carrying capacity of potential winter road areas for different vehicles in the Pan Arctic region. To distinguish the bearing capacity levels of potential winter road areas, we further considered the bearing capacity corresponding to soil freezing depth and lake ice thickness based on traditional environmental threshold values, and classified the bearing capacity based on the total weight categories of common vehicles in the Pan Arctic region. Thus, monthly winter road potential carrying capacity classification data for the cold season (October May) in the Pan Arctic region from 2003 to 2022 hydrological years were produced, with a spatial resolution of 0.1 °. The numerical type is byte type, with a range of 0-5. Among them, 0 indicates that the bearing capacity (P<0.5 t) of non winter road potential areas or winter road potential areas is insufficient to support ultra light vehicles (such as sleds and snowmobiles); 1-5 represents the potential area of winter roads where the carrying capacity (corresponding to the weight of the vehicle) gradually increases. 1 represents the carrying capacity (0.5 t ≤ P<5 t) that can support ultra light vehicles, 2 represents the carrying capacity (5 t ≤ P<12 t) that can support light vehicles (such as small buses and pickups), 3 represents the carrying capacity (12 t ≤ P<36 t) that can support medium vehicles (such as buses and medium box trucks), 4 represents the carrying capacity (36 t ≤ P <55 t) that can support heavy vehicles (such as large trucks and tractors), and 5 represents the carrying capacity (P ≥ 55 t) that can support ultra heavy vehicles (such as mixer trucks and dump trucks). This data provides basic data support for transportation and accessibility research in the Pan Arctic region.
Environmental raster datasets used to identify potential winter roads and their bearing capacity include: (1) ERA5-Land, a global reanalysis dataset that provides monthly land surface temperature, snow depth, multi-layer soil temperature and volumetric water content, and lake ice thickness data at 0.1° resolution (https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.68d2bb30); (2) MOD44W v006, a global map of surface water derived from Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer images at 250 m resolution (https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD44W.006); (3) Global River Widths from Landsat, which characterizes global river distribution at 30 m resolution (https://zenodo.org/records/1297434); (4) ETOPO1, global elevation data at 1 arc-minute resolution (https://doi.org/10.7289/V5C8276M); and (5) VectorMap0, a 1:1000000 geographical element vector data, including land ice areas (https://gis-lab.info/qa/vmap0-eng.html).
To classify the bearing capacity of potential winter roads, we compiled the pan-Arctic vehicle weight category. It includes light, medium, and heavy vehicles as defined by the Federal Highway Administration's Gross Vehicle Weight Rating Category (https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10380), and are supplemented by super-light (e.g., sleds and snowmobiles) and super-heavy vehicles (exceeding the heavy vehicle weight range) reported to operate on winter roads in the literature. The maximum gross weight of each vehicle class was used as the bearing threshold that potential winter roads can support for that vehicle class.
(1) Potential winter roads were identified using the following environmental thresholds: land surface temperature ≤ 0 ℃, land snow depth ≥ 20 cm, non-mountainous areas (elevation < 500 m and slope < 5%), and non-glacial areas.
(2) For potential winter roads, Shoop's formula and Gold's formula were applied to estimate bearing capacity in land- and ice-sections, respectively, based on soil freeze depth (defined as the soil depth at 0 ℃ interpolated from multi-layer soil temperature) and lake ice thickness.
(3) The bearing capacity level of potential winter roads was then classified according to the pan-Arctic vehicle weight category.
The dataset was produced using scientifically established methods, including environmental thresholds for identifying potential winter roads, formulas for estimating bearing capacity in land- and ice-sections, and the pan-Arctic vehicle weight category, all of which are widely applied in research and engineering. The input data consist of authoritative remote sensing products and state-of-the-art reanalysis datasets, ensuring high data quality. The dataset provides relatively high spatiotemporal resolution (0.1°, monthly) and broad coverage, spanning the Pan-Arctic region from 60°N to 85°N over 160 cold-season months during water years 2002–2023.
| # | number | name | type |
| 1 | 2020YFA0608504 | None | National key R & D plan |
This work is licensed under
CC BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License).
CSTR:11738.11.NCDC.ARCTIC-CHANGE.DB7141.2026
10.12072/ncdc.arctic-change.db7141.2026
