Russian scientists from the Kirensky Institute of Physics SB RAS in Krasnoyarsk, in collaboration with American colleagues from Michigan, are working on the development of a new dielectric model of the tundra and forest-tundra for remote probing from space.


This research is supported by the US Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) and the Federal Agency for Science and Innovation (Rossnauka). Soil, in its very essence, is a dielectric, the properties of which can be characterized by dielectric permittivity. The latter depends for the most part on the content in soil of water that, under minus temperatures, has not frozen; so-called bound water. The oscillations of dielectric permittivity are reflected on the thermal balance of the surface, which can be seen under microwave probing of soils.

The new model, under development by the Siberian scientists, calculates the oscillations of the dielectric permittivity with account of mineral composition, organic content, moisture volume and soil temperature. It can be verified in action, having been compared with data from many years of earth-based observations. Then, believe the scientists, it could be applied for various soil and vegetation types that are encountered in the near-Polar Arctic and, in this way, the quality of climatic forecasts can be raised significantly.