Detecting the Depth of a Subsurface Brine Layer in Lop Nur Lake Basin Using Polarimetric L-Band SAR

Lop Nur once was a huge lake located in northwestern China. At present, there is no surface water in Lop Nur Lake basin and on SAR images it looks like an “Ear.” The objective of this paper is to retrieve the depth of subsurface brine layer in Lop Nur by copolarized phase difference of surface scattering. Based on field investigation and analysis of sample properties, a two-layer scattering structure was proposed with detailed explanations of scattering mechanisms. The relationship between copolarized phase difference and the brine layer depth in the region of Lop Nur were studied. The copolarized phase difference of surface scattering was extracted by model-based polarimetric decomposition method. A good linear correlation between measured subsurface brine layer depth and copolarized phase difference with R2 reaching 0.82 was found. Furthermore, the subsurface brine layer depth of the entire lake area was analyzed. According to the retrieved maps, some interesting phenomena were found, and several hypotheses about the past water withdrawal process and the environmental evolution had been proposed to theoretically explain these phenomena. Based on the penetration capability of SAR the reconstruction of historical evolution process of Lop Nur will be an interesting topic for future research.