Scientists of Yamal are measuring temperature in wells on the research station Parisento

Comprehensive geocryological research initiated by the scientific center for study of the Arctic in previous years will be continued in mid-July on the research station Parisento in the central part of the Gydan Peninsula.

In 2018 the scientists of Yamal plan to drill six-eight permafrost-parametric wells up to 12 meters deep to select core for studying its moisture and granulometric composition and also to install thermistor chains. Once a day sensors will record temperature at different depths and transmit it to temperature loggers located at the wellhead. The scientists will be able to receive necessary amount of information about temperature fluctuations in permafrost soils. According to the director of the scientific center for study of the Arctic, candidate of geological-mineralogical sciences Anton Sinitskiy, field identification of temperature in the wells is one of the key methods to monitor status and evolution of cryolithozone. In the eighties of the last century on the station Parisento there was a whole network of profiles of observation thermometric wells. However, after several decades, being in abandoned state, the wells became unusable. One of the main goals of resumption of research on the station is to lay new wells next to ones existing in the past to compare old indexes of temperature with current ones and to continue monitoring. “Our task is to drill wells in places as close as possible to those points, where observations over soil temperature were conducted in 1980-1990-ies on the geocryological station Parisento, in those years it was one of the largest in Western Siberia”, as Anton Sinitskiy said. – “During the previous field season the wells were drilled here up to 3.5-4 meters. Upon returning this year from the expedition we shall have data on soil temperatures in the zone of distribution of the seasonally thawed layer and even a little deeper”. According to Anton Sinitskiy, the necessity to drill wells up to the depth in 10-12 meters is associated with passing of the boundary of zero annual temperature fluctuations. The points of laying the first wells were planned in the places with different geo-morphological conditions typical for this location. Drilling operations will be fulfilled also as last year with help of a mobile drilling rig UKB 12/25I with taking samples of moisture through each meter. On the station Parisento the employees of the scientific center for study of the Arctic will conduct research of permafrost structures with help of areal geophysical surveys. The complex of geophysical methods will include electrical tomography and ground-penetrating radar, which traditionally are used for such studies. According to a senior researcher of the sector of geological and geographical research, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences Yaroslav Kamnev, the work is fundamental. The area of the station is untouched by infrastructure. From a scientific point of view, it is interesting to see how ice bodies in the form of layers spread in the cut and on the area, primarily in districts of lakes, rivers, etc. During the expedition on the Gydan Peninsula in July-August of 2018 the specialists of the Scientific Research Laboratory of Geo-ecology of the North under Lomonosov Moscow State University will work together with the scientists of Yamal. Their scientific interest is in research of relief and Quaternary deposits in the upper reaches of the Yuribey River for establishing of general properties and patterns of forming and functioning of these components of the landscape, for identifying of history of the region’s development in the late Pleistocene-Holocene and also for defining of special features of modern dangerous exogenous geological processes.