A team of scientists from the Centre for Polar Studies consisting of: Dariusz Ignatiuk, PhD; Mariusz Grabiec, PhD, Dsc, Assoc. Prof. and Michał Laska, PhD from the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Silesia received, as a leader, funding for the project “25 years of high – frequency ground penetrating radar measurements of snow studies in Svalbard” financed by the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS).
The project involves writing a chapter for the prestigious SESS Report – The State of Environmental Science in Svalbard Report, which will be published in January 2023.
The project is carried out in cooperation with partners from Norway (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, The Norwegian Polar Institute, University of Oslo, The University Centre in Svalbard), Poland (Institute of Geophysics PAS), Russia (Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and Sweden (Uppsala University).
There is a need to analyse large amount of scattered data and metadata related to GPR surveys of Arctic snow cover. The high resolution GPR method is one of the few methods allowing for continuous measurements of spatial variability of snow depth. This remote method can also provide unique information about the internal structure of the snow cover.
The planned chapter of the SESS Report will be the first survey to fully assess the quality and quantity of snow cover surveys using GPR in Svalbard. On the basis of the already published results, the methodology of data interpretation will be presented, as well as the analysis of spatial variability of snow cover in various parts of Svalbard.
The publication is intended to strengthen cooperation within the Svalbard Snow Network. The created dataset will support the use of existing data by the modelling community and activities related to calibration and validation of remote sensing data.
