Abstract
Abstract. Global warming in recent years led to significant permafrost degradation worldwide. Accurate monitoring and comprehensive characterization of the deformation process in seasonally frozen soil is of great importance for constructions in cold regions in China. This work concentrates on the deformation laws and spatio-temporal characteristics of frost heave in high latitude and seasonally frozen soil of Inner Mongolia with time series InSAR observations. With 101 Sentinel-1 descending scenes that covered more than three freeze-thaw cycles for the study area along Shiwei-Labudalin Highway, this study realized the characterization of the frost heave deformations in seasonally frozen soil, and the analysis of the influencing factors of the hydrothermal process with the help of temperature and moisture data from in-situ monitoring. Time series InSAR observations show that most parts of the highway show obvious deformation with a displacement rate of around 30–60 mm/yr. Especially, the deformation evolution in this seasonally frozen soil region changes with seasons, demonstrating a notable annual cyclical characteristic and seasonal activity. Moreover, time series in-situ monitoring data in deep underground boreholes not only further explains the deformation kinematics from InSAR observations, but also provide a better supplement for a more comprehensive mechanism understanding of frost heave deformations.
Highlights
With the increasingly severe trend of global warming, large area of permafrost degradation has occurred worldwide (Jin et al, 2007)
Domestic researchers (Yao et al, 2017) found that, due to the effect of post freezing entropy, the surface soil moisture in the seasonally frozen soil area of Inner Mongolia Grasslands increased significantly under the actions of freeze-thaw cycles, which led to a severe impact on the frost damage in highway constructions
Thanks to the long evolution time span that covered more than three freeze-thaw cycles, time series InSAR deformation results of these three points show that deformation in this region changes with seasons, demonstrating a notable annual cyclical characteristic and seasonal activity
Summary
With the increasingly severe trend of global warming, large area of permafrost degradation has occurred worldwide (Jin et al, 2007). Under the actions of freeze-thaw cycles, the alternate occurrence of frost heave and thaw settlement is the remarkable feature of this kind of special soil, which is the prominent problem that perplexes the engineering constructions in seasonal frozen soil regions. The research on deformation laws and spatio-temporal characteristics of frost heave in seasonally frozen soil by InSAR remote sensing techniques needs to be further carried out. This work focuses on the application of time series InSAR processing with Sentinel-1 TOPS datasets, to monitor and characterize the frost heave deformations in high latitude and seasonally frozen soil of Inner Mongolia. The spatial and temporal evolutional characteristics of the frost heave deformations of seasonally frozen soil in the study area could be retrieved, and the influencing factors of the hydrothermal process with temperature and moisture data from in-situ observation stations are analysed in details
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