Investigating peat deposits with ground-penetrating radar – a case study of drained bogs in Western Siberia, Russia

Abstract

This paper deals with the assessment of the peat deposit transformation of two drained raised bogs (the Bakchar bog drained for forestry and the Ust-Bakchar bog drained for peat extraction) within the Western Siberian taiga zone. Specifically, the objectives of this study were to: 1) characterise the peat deposits of key sites with the use of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and manual data; 2) estimate the spatial differentiation of modern peat accumulation rates at the microhabitat level. We used the GPR system “OKO-2” with 250, 700, and 1700 MHz shielded antennas and a displacement sensor. We concluded that the use of this GPR complex allowed the assessment of the total depth of the peat deposit, the depth of the fibric peat layer, and the thickness of the layer formed after drainage. We paid attention to defining the patterns of layers formed at depth after drainage within hummocks or hollow microhabitats. The peat accumulation after drainage was not continual throughout all mire surface, which was most typical for plots of the Ust-Bakchar bog. The modern peat accumulation increased 1.3–2.2 times from hollows to hummocks and it was 2–4 times higher within the Bakchar bog than in the Ust-Bakchar bog.