Radar-icy regolith interactions at the McGill Arctic Research Station (MARS) at Axel Heiberg Island

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Funds are requested to support the field project associated with my submitted NSERC Discovery Grant proposal entitled, "Radar remote sensing and geological analysis of planetary surfaces."  One of the projects outlined in that proposal is a field-based ground-penetrating radar (GPR) investigation, aimed at understanding the interactions between radar signals and icy regolith in polar desert terrains.  This work will be conducted at the McGill Arctic Research Station (MARS), located 8 km inland at Expedition Fiord, on Central Axel Heiberg Island in Nunavut (79.4° N, 90.8° W).  The objective of this work is to quantify the interactions of radar signals with various ice-rich geological materials that can serve as analogues to planetary materials.  Though many studies have used radar as a remote sensing tool to search for and characterize shallow subsurface ice on Earth and other planets, a systematic investigation of the phase signatures of ground ice in various forms on polarimetric radar is needed.  This is particularly important for studies of Martian surface and near-surface materials, where, because of the low temperatures and pressures, it is likely that a significant volume of water occupies the shallow subsurface in the form of ground ice. Penetrating radar, combined with other geophysical techniques, has been shown to be extremely effective at characterizing shallow subsurface materials on Earth, and there is much interest among members of the international Mars community in developing a landed GPR system for Mars. Beyond the planetary community, my results will also be important for practical applications involving development in northern communities, where an understanding of the nature of ground ice is key to mitigating the effects of thermokarst [40] and similar phenomena.  Finally, I will ultimately seek to use my results to develop a method for detecting long-term changes in the distribution and nature of ground ice over large areas; if this is successful, it would provide a new way to monitor the effects of global climate change in northern regions.