With help of satellite technology, researchers monitor periglacial
landforms in the permafrost landscape in Svalbard. The project PERMASAR is a
cooperation between the Northern Research Institute Norut in Tromsř, the
University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), the Geological Survey of Norway, the
Norwegian Space Centre and the University of Oslo.
- It is the first time, as far as we know, that satellite based radar
technology is being used to monitor the changes in movement of permafrost
landforms, says Hanne Christiansen, UNIS. Together with senior scientist
Yngvar Larsen and project leader Tom Rune Lauknes from the Northern Research
Institute, Norut, Tromsř she has last week studied the first satellite
images that have been downloaded since June this year. The team also visited
some of the ground installations measuring movement of the terrain in situ.
There is a permafrost observatory established in Svalbard that is made up of
several ground-based instruments that measure ground thermal conditions but
also solifluction (widespread downslope sediment transport in periglacial
environments) in some few points in Svalbard; such as in Adventdalen just
outside Longyearbyen, and at Kapp Linné at the mouth of Isfjorden.
However, these ground-based instruments only measure the movement at certain
points of the terrain surface. The satellite monitoring, on the other hand,
can give information about the surface changes for several square
kilometers.
By comparing the ground-based measurements and the satellite data, the
scientists are hoping to get a more comprehensive picture of changes in the
upper ground layer over larger parts of the landscape, including several
periglacial landforms such as avalanche fans, solifluction sheets, rock
glaciers, ice-wedges and pingos.
The technology used in the project is called InSAR (Interferometric
Synthetic Aperture Radar). Norut receives and processes the images from the
radar satellites TerraSAR-X and Radarsat-2 that produce images of the study
areas in Svalbard with an interval of 11 and 24 days, respectively.
In addition to monitoring the movement of permafrost landforms, the
scientists can use the satellite images also to assess the snow cover and
the snow melt during the season.
- It is a quite unique project because it is the first time we employ
satellite images to monitor the changes in the permafrost terrain over a
whole season – from the snow starts melting in June until October, when the
ground is frozen again in Svalbard, says project leader Tom Rune Lauknes.
After the season ends in October the team will gather all the data, process
the images to see if the two different measuring techniques match, and if so
in the future can give a better insight into the movement of several
permafrost landforms.
The researchers hope to be able to present the results at the Third European
Permafrost Conference at UNIS in June next year.
The project is coordinated by Norut and financed by the Norwegian Space
Centre and the oil company StatoilHydro.
(Source: www.unis.no)
Read more:
http://www.unis.no/60_NEWS/6050_Archive_2009/n_09_09_23_permasar/
satellite_monitors_permafrost_news_23092009.htm
Norut:
http://en.norut.no/norut
Thermal State of Permafrost in Norway and Svalbard (TSP Norway):
http://www.tspnorway.com/
Third European Conference on Permafrost, 13-17 June 2010 in Longyearbyen:
http://www.eucop2010.no/
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Kapp Linné 12 June 2009.
Kapp Linné 4 July 2009.
Kapp Linné 12 September 2009. All above images are
taken by the TerraSAR-X satellite (All images: Copyright © 2009 German
Aerospace Center (DLR)/Norut.). |
