Seasonal Deformation of Permafrost in Wudaoliang Basin in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Revealed by StaMPS-InSAR

Abstract

Permafrost is extremely sensitive to variance in external hydrothermal conditions. InSAR has advantages in monitoring surface deformation with decent temporal and spatial resolution as well as millimeter precision. In particular, the StaMPS-InSAR method can remove the disturbances of inaccurate digital elevation model (DEM), atmospheric delays and spatiotemporal decorrelation for an accurate estimation of temporal surface deformation. In this paper, a set of ascending and descending Sentinel-1 imageries spanning from March 2017 to June 2018 were acquired and processed by StaMPS-InSAR in order to investigate dynamic changes of permafrost in Wudaoliang Basin, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). The results revealed that significant seasonal changes of permafrost, namely subsidence (thawing) in summer and uplift (freezing) in winter, can be observed throughout the Wudaoliang region. This study shows the StaMPS-InSAR analysis on Sentinel-1 datasets has great potential in regional permafrost investigation.

Keywords:

• InSAR
• permafrost
• Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
• Sentinel-1
• StaMPS

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFA0603100) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41671413).