Thaw subsidence of a Yedoma landscape in Northern Siberia, measured in Situ and estimated from TerraSAR-X interferometry

• Verfasst von: Antonova, Sofia [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Sudhaus, Henriette [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Strozzi, Tazio [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Zwieback, Simon [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Kääb, Andreas [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Heim, Birgit [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Langer, Moritz [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Bornemann, Niko [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Boike, Julia [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Thaw subsidence of a Yedoma landscape in Northern Siberia, measured in Situ and estimated from TerraSAR-X interferometry
• Verf.angabe: Sofia Antonova, Henriette Sudhaus, Tazio Strozzi, Simon Zwieback, Andreas Kääb, Birgit Heim, Moritz Langer, Niko Bornemann and Julia Boike
• E-Jahr: 2018
• Jahr: 21 March 2018
• Umfang: 27 S.
• Fussnoten: Gesehen am 02.06.2020
• Titel Quelle: Enthalten in: Remote sensing
• Ort Quelle: Basel : MDPI, 2009
• Jahr Quelle: 2018
• Band/Heft Quelle: 10(2018,4) Artikel-Nummer 494, 27 Seiten
• ISSN Quelle: 2072-4292
• DOI: doi:10.3390/rs10040494
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• Sach-SW: DInSAR
• Sach-SW: in situ measurements
• Sach-SW: Lena River Delta
• Sach-SW: permafrost
• Sach-SW: TerraSAR-X
• Sach-SW: thaw subsidence
• Sach-SW: yedoma
• K10plus-PPN: 1699196990

Abstract

In permafrost areas, seasonal freeze-thaw cycles result in upward and downward movements of the ground. For some permafrost areas, long-term downward movements were reported during the last decade. We measured seasonal and multi-year ground movements in a yedoma region of the Lena River Delta, Siberia, in 2013-2017, using reference rods installed deep in the permafrost. The seasonal subsidence was 1.7 ± 1.5 cm in the cold summer of 2013 and 4.8 ± 2 cm in the warm summer of 2014. Furthermore, we measured a pronounced multi-year net subsidence of 9.3 ± 5.7 cm from spring 2013 to the end of summer 2017. Importantly, we observed a high spatial variability of subsidence of up to 6 cm across a sub-meter horizontal scale. In summer 2013, we accompanied our field measurements with Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (DInSAR) on repeat-pass TerraSAR-X (TSX) data from the summer of 2013 to detect summer thaw subsidence over the same study area. Interferometry was strongly affected by a fast phase coherence loss, atmospheric artifacts, and possibly the choice of reference point. A cumulative ground movement map, built from a continuous interferogram stack, did not reveal a subsidence on the upland but showed a distinct subsidence of up to 2 cm in most of the thermokarst basins. There, the spatial pattern of DInSAR-measured subsidence corresponded well with relative surface wetness identified with the near infra-red band of a high-resolution optical image. Our study suggests that (i) although X-band SAR has serious limitations for ground movement monitoring in permafrost landscapes, it can provide valuable information for specific environments like thermokarst basins, and (ii) due to the high sub-pixel spatial variability of ground movements, a validation scheme needs to be developed and implemented for future DInSAR studies in permafrost environments.