Exploring the applicability of high temporal resolution SAR for monitoring permafrost landscapes

• Main Authors: Stettner, Samuel, Lantuit, Hugues, Bartsch, Annett, Heim, Birgit, Grosse, Guido, Roth, Achim, Widhalm, Barbara, Antonova, Sofia, Zwieback, Simon
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Herschel; Herschel Island; Ice; lena delta; permafrost; polar night; Siberia; Yukon
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/41194/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/41194/1/2016-05_ESA-LPS_poster_Stettner.pdf; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.48136; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.48136.d001

Permafrost is stated as an essential climate variable by the World Meteorological Organization and is an important physical landscape component of high-latitude environments. The variability of the permafrost ecosystem parameters soil moisture (SM) as well as freeze-thaw (FT) has a strong impact on rapid permafrost degradation, on surface energy and water fluxes as well as on biogeochemical processes. Thus information about the mentioned parameters in high temporal and spatial resolution is important for the understanding of processes in permafrost landscapes. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) operates independently of cloud coverage and polar night and today’s SAR satellite systems provide imagery with high temporal and spatial resolution. Existing operational satellite SAR data products of SM and FT are available only in coarse-scale resolution. We are investigating high-spatial resolution SAR of TerraSAR-X (TSX), and in future ALOS-2, Sentinel-1, as well as optical very high resolution satellite imagery in combination with in-situ experimental monitoring data to investigate the spatiotemporal variability of permafrost disturbances, SM and FT on the watershed scale. Our study site for rapid permafrost degradation is an actively eroding ice- and organic-rich permafrost riverbank from the so called Ice-Complex within the central Lena Delta, Siberia. Our studies on SM and FT focus on a small scale watershed on Herschel Island along the western Yukon Coast, Canada and can potentially be transferred to the Ice-Complex permafrost landscape in the Lena Delta. Automated micro-stations with near to surface soil moisture and temperature sensors were installed in the Lena Delta (since 2013) and on Herschel Island (since 2015). Field work on Herschel Island and the Lena Delta included handheld soil moisture measurements as well as extensive soil sampling. In spring 2015 we conducted a GPS survey in the Lena Delta along the test site and installed a time-lapse camera as well as wooden poles with 50cm distance perpendicular to ...