A decade of land surface deformation monitoring across Arctic lowland permafrost regions with Sentinel-1

Ground temperatures are steadily increasing across the Arctic. Observations also show increasing active layer thickness. This leads to melt of ice at the upper permafrost boundary and changes in microtopography. Land surface deformation derived from SAR interferometry can serve as an indication for potential permafrost degradation and as a tool to describe wet/dry gradients. Progress has been made specifically with the launch of the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission in 2014. Challenges remain including data gaps due to acquisition strategies, and ionospheric and atmospheric effects.

Sentinel-1 data availability and processing constrains have been investigated across Arctic permafrost lowlands. Specifically, the impact of spatial filtering for the reduction of ionospheric and atmospheric effects has been assessed. Within season and multiannual deformation has been derived for five distinct environments across Northern America and Northern Eurasia. Results were assessed to a range of environmental parameters including land cover and permafrost properties (Permafrost CCI records) using Random Forest regressor analyses.

On average data from half of the years could be utilized. Differences in deformation patterns were found due to region specific disturbances, but in general linkages with landcover and permafrost properties were similar across the Arctic.