Application of georadiolocation to assess the influence of the highway on the depth of permafrost in polygonal swamps of the North of Western Siberia

Abstract

The results of the application of geo-radar profiling for the study of soils and underlying rocks of polygonal bogs of the Pur-Taz interfluve (North of Western Siberia), functioning in natural and anthropogenic disturbed conditions, are presented. The research area belongs to the southern tundra with a predominantly continuous distribution of permafrost rocks. The construction of highways in the North of Russia is one of the main factors of anthropogenic impact on the tundra geosystems of the cryolithozone, affecting the temperature regimes of soils and the depth of permafrost. The features of spatial differentiation of the depth of occurrence of permafrost rocks on the site of polygonal swamps intersected by a federal highway were determined by the methods of geo-radar profiling. Georadiolactic profiling made it possible to determine the configuration of the depth of the permafrost roof both in natural and anthropogenic disturbed areas of polygonal swamps. The maximum lowering of the permafrost roof is determined at the base of the road embankment and does not exceed a depth of three meters. Despite the deep occurrence of the MMP roof under the road embankment, the thickness of the thawed buried peat horizons here is similar to that of the seasonally shallow layer of undisturbed peat polygons. The features of spatial differentiation of the depth of the permafrost roof in the polygonal swamps intersected by the bulk highway in the North of Western Siberia are similar to those characteristic of regions with a continuous low-temperature cryolithozone. The method of manual probing of the permafrost roof was used to verify the results of geo-radar profiling within undisturbed areas.