Estimating Trapped Gas Concentrations as Bubbles Within Lake Ice Using Ground Penetrating Radar

Abstract:

Climate warming is currently one of the most important issues that we are facing. The degradation of permafrost beneath thermokarst lakes has been associated with enhanced methane emissions and it presents a positive feedback to climate warming. Thermokarst lakes release methane to the atmosphere mainly by ebullition (bubbling) but there are a large number of uncertainties regarding the magnitude and variability of these emissions. Here we present a methodology to estimate the amount of gas released from thermokarst lakes through ebullition using ground-penetrating radar (GPR). This geophysical technique is well suited for this type of problem because it is non-invasive, continuous, and requires less effort and time than the direct visual inspection. We are studying GPR data collected using 1.2 GHz frequency antennas in Brooklyn Lake, Laramie, WY, in order to quantify the uncertainties in the method. Although this is not a thermokarst lake, gas bubbles are trapped in the ice and spatial variability in bubble concentration within the ice is evident. To assess the variability in bulk physical properties of the ice due to bubbles, we gathered GPR data from different types of ice. We compared the velocity of the groundwave and reflection obtained from radargrams, and found on each case a larger value for the groundwave velocity suggesting a non-homogeneous medium and that the concentration of bubbles is prone to be near the surface instead of at greater depths. We use a multi-phase dielectric-mixing model to estimate the amount of gas present in a sample of volume of ice and found an uncertainty in relative permittivity (estimated using reflection velocity) of 0.0294, which translates to an uncertainty of 1.1% in gas content; and employing groundwave velocity we found 0.0712 and 2.9%, respectively. If locations of gas seeps in lakes could be detected and quantified using GPR along with field measurements, this could help to constrain future lake-source carbon gas estimates.