Radar Remote Sensing in Hyper-Arid Areas: Challenges and Opportunities in Understanding Deserts Responses to Environmental Drivers

• Main Authors: Heggy, E., Farag, A. Z. A., Palmer, E. M., Normand, J.
• Other Authors: USC Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California (USC)
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2019
• Subjects: 1855 Remote sensing; HYDROLOGY; [SDU.STU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences; Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; polar desert
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04293025

International audience A wrong but nonetheless widespread belief is that there is little knowledge to be gained from understanding water dynamics in deserts, and that water drinkability is the main question to be addressed. Hence, most of the existing regional research resources are being allocated to producing more water with little focus on understanding the temporal and spatial variability of the geophysical and the environmental drivers of water scarcity. The truth is that science questions associated with groundwater occurrence and dynamics in arid environments goes beyond drinkability. Phenomena like potential modern recharge of fossil aquifers from anomalous precipitation patterns and aquifer dynamics through fractured and karst environments control every aspect of the environmental and climatic evolution of vast hyper-arid areas of our planet. Of particular interest are the extended arid areas south of the Mediterranean basin, the Sahara and the Arabian Peninsula deserts which forms the largest non-polar desert on Earth, occupying ~ 10% of Earth's continental surface. These areas exhibit a different and unique response to climate change compared to other well-characterized environments such as Greenland and Antarctica. These changes are mostly materialized in the variations of surface and subsurface soil saturation levels, including wetland evolution and aquifer dynamics. Current groundwater maps in arid environments primarily rely upon a limited number of unevenly distributed well logs without little to no input from large-scale orbital or airborne probing experiments. We will present an overview of few airborne and orbital mission concepts that are in formulation phase mostly radar probing experiments and how they can play a crucial role in addressing the deficiencies in large-scale groundwater characterization in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. We will also address how they can answer questions regarding the large-scale variability of depth and shape of the shallow water tables (i.e., < ...