Measuring Thermokarst Subsidence Using InSAR: Potential and Pitfalls

Abstract:

Thawing of ice-rich permafrost results in irregular, depressed landforms known as thermokarst terrain. The significant subsidence leading to thermokarst features can expand lakes, drain lakes, accelerate thaw, disturb the soil column, and promote erosion. Consequently, it affects many permafrost-region processes including vegetation succession, hydrology, and carbon storage and cycling. Many remote sensing studies identify thermokarst landforms and catalog their ever-changing areas. Yet the intrinsic dynamic thermokarst process, namely surface subsidence, remains a challenge to map and is seldom examined using remote sensing methods.

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is a remote sensing technique that uses a time-series of satellite SAR images to measure cm-level land surface deformation. We demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of space-borne InSAR data to map thermokarst subsidence at a site located near Prudhoe Bay, on the North Slope of Alaska. A pipeline access road was constructed at this site in the 1970s, and is likely to have triggered the thawing of the region’s permafrost, causing subsequent expansion of thermokarst-landform terrain. Our InSAR analysis using ALOS PALSAR images reveals that the thermokarst landforms in this region have undergone up to 10 cm of surface subsidence each summer from 2007 to 2010. This pilot study demonstrates the application of InSAR to map localized mass movement in permafrost terrain. We also illustrate how the effectiveness and accuracy of InSAR measurements are limited by several factors such as loss of interferometric coherence due to fast changes of ground surface conditions, spatial and temporal resolutions of InSAR data, and difficulty separating long-term and seasonal deformation signals.