Monitoring the Degradation of Island Permafrost Using Time-Series InSAR Technique: A Case Study of Heihe, China
1
School of Geosciences and Info-Physics, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
2
Engineering Consulting and Design Institute, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin 150040, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sensors 2019, 19(6), 1364; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19061364
Received: 9 February 2019
/
Revised: 14 March 2019
/
Accepted: 15 March 2019
/
Published: 19 March 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Geohazards)
In the context of global warming, the air temperature of the Heihe basin in Northeast China has increased significantly, resulting in the degradation of the island permafrost. In this paper, we used an elaborated time-series Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) strategy to monitor the ground deformation in the Heihe area (Heilongjiang Province, China) and then analyzed the permafrost deformation characteristics from June 2007 to December 2010. The results showed that the region presented island permafrost surface deformation, and the deformation rate along the line of sight mainly varied from –70 to 70 mm/a. Based on the analysis of remote sensing and topological measurements, we found that the deformation area generally occurred at lower altitudes and on shady slopes, which is consistent with the distribution characteristics of permafrost islands. Additionally, the deformation of permafrost is highly correlated with the increase of annual minimum temperature, with an average correlation value of –0.80. The accelerated degradation of permafrost in the study area led to the settlement, threatening the infrastructure safety. Our results reveal accelerated degradation characteristics for the island permafrost under the background of rising air temperature, and provide a reference for future relevant research.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
island permafrost; deformation; time-series InSAR; global warming; geohazards
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
MDPI and ACS Style
Wang, S.; Xu, B.; Shan, W.; Shi, J.; Li, Z.; Feng, G. Monitoring the Degradation of Island Permafrost Using Time-Series InSAR Technique: A Case Study of Heihe, China. Sensors 2019, 19, 1364. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19061364
AMA Style
Wang S, Xu B, Shan W, Shi J, Li Z, Feng G. Monitoring the Degradation of Island Permafrost Using Time-Series InSAR Technique: A Case Study of Heihe, China. Sensors. 2019; 19(6):1364. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19061364
Chicago/Turabian StyleWang, Sai, Bing Xu, Wei Shan, Jiancun Shi, Zhiwei Li, and Guangcai Feng. 2019. "Monitoring the Degradation of Island Permafrost Using Time-Series InSAR Technique: A Case Study of Heihe, China" Sensors 19, no. 6: 1364. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19061364
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
