Ground surface displacement after a forest fire near Mayya, Eastern
Siberia, using InSAR: Observation and implication for geophysical
modeling
Abstract
Forest fires significantly impact permafrost degradation in the
subarctic regions. However, inter-annual and seasonal variations in
surface deformation due to permafrost thawing in burned areas were
poorly understood. Measuring the ground surface displacement in fire
scars helps us understand the freeze–thaw dynamics of near-surface
ground and predict the future state, particularly in ice-rich permafrost
regions. This study used the L- and C-band interferometric synthetic
aperture radar (InSAR) technique to reveal inter-annual subsidence and
seasonal thaw settlement/frost heave in a fire scar near Mayya, Sakha
Republic in Eastern Siberia burned in 2013. We found that the cumulative
subsidence was up to 7 cm between 2014 and 2020, most of which had
occurred by 2016. The magnitude of seasonal thaw settlement and frost
heave varied each year from 2017 to 2020 after the fire, but the
inter-annual change in frost heave corresponded to the temporal
variation in precipitation during the thawing season from 2017 to 2020.
This suggests that the precipitation amount during the thawing season is
related to the magnitude of segregation–ice formation in the sediments,
which determines the frost heave amount. The observed seasonal
displacements could not be quantitatively explained by models inferred
from the Stefan’s equation and volume changes associated with ice–water
phase change. This implies that other models associated with segregated
ice (ice lens) formation/thaw are required to explain the observed
seasonal displacement.