Drone-Based Ground-Penetrating Radar with Manual Transects for Improved Field Surveys of Buried Ice

The steep and unstable terrain found on debris-covered glaciers, rock glaciers, talus slopes, moraines and other proglacial features often make terrestrial ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys unsafe or cost-prohibitive. To address these challenges, this research introduces a novel approach for st...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote Sensing
Main Authors: Adam R. Tjoelker, Michel Baraër, Eole Valence, Bastien Charonnat, Janie Masse-Dufresne, Bryan G. Mark, Jeffrey M. McKenzie
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024
Subjects:
drones
ground-penetrating radar
buried ice
debris-covered glacier
Science
Q
glacier*
Yukon
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16132461
https://doaj.org/article/096ba9fea37f45f88259288fd02f4c87
Description
Summary:The steep and unstable terrain found on debris-covered glaciers, rock glaciers, talus slopes, moraines and other proglacial features often make terrestrial ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys unsafe or cost-prohibitive. To address these challenges, this research introduces a novel approach for studying buried ice using multi-low-frequency drone-based GPR. Monostatic antennas of 50, 100, and 200 MHz were flown along a transect spanning a debris-covered glacier and an ice–debris complex at Shár Shaw Tagà (Grizzly Creek) in southwest Yukon, Canada. The drone-based results were compared to manual GPR at two locations along the transect. The two manual segments were conducted using the same radar system in a bi-static mode and included common mid-point (CMP) surveys. Overall, the drone-based radar successfully identified buried ice and enabled estimation of ice body thickness. Notably, CMP results confirmed layer characteristics and enabled depths to be measured across the entire drone-based transect. Discrimination of detail across a range of depths was made possible by comparing the three low frequencies, highlighting the possibility of using this method for future investigations of debris thickness in addition to quantifying buried ice. This study confirms the effectiveness of drone-based GPR combined with manual CMP for surveying ice beneath previously inaccessible terrain.

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