GNGTS 2023 - Atti del 41° Convegno Nazionale

Session 3.2 ___ GNGTS 2023 Hydro-Geophysical characterization of the arctic environment, Ny-Ålesund (Svalbard) A. Vergnano 1 , F. Pace 1 , G. Romano 2 , A. Godio 1 , A. Santilano 3 , L. Capozzoli 4 , I. Baneschi 3 , L. Franceschi 3 , M. Menichini 3 , M. Doveri 3 1 Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering (DIATI), Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy 2 Department of Earth and GeoEnvironmental sciences, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy 3 Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources - National Research Council (IGG-CNR), Pisa, Italy 4 Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis-National Research Council (IMAA-CNR), Potenza, Italy Introduction The Arctic research station in Ny-Ålesund (Svalbard, Norway) is an international base for several research fields. It shines for hydrogeological studies, being situated in a little basin in which the entire water cycle from glaciers to sea can be studied in an area of a few kilometers squared. Hydrogeological studies are easily linked to other research fields, such as geophysics, geochemistry, geomorphology, and biology, making multidisciplinary research possible and valuable. Few geophysical campaigns have been carried out in Svalbard (Ross et al. 2007; Kasprzak et al. 2017). The Ny-Ålesund area lacks geophysical subsoil characterization as well, even if some exploratory drillings were made in the first half of the 20th century for coal mining purposes. The area is geophysically interesting and challenging, because of the presence of permafrost, springs, and old coal mines; spatial heterogeneity in geophysical properties is also expected because of geologic faults and geomorphologic features linked to the past ice movement. To explore the subsoil in arctic tundra environments, past research has successfully employed two geophysical techniques, Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) (Leger et al., 2017; Hauck and Kneisel, 2008, Sjöberg et al. 2015), which allowed the researchers to detect frozen/unfrozen areas and to distinguish the active layer from permafrost. The ICEtoFLUX project and the geophysical campaigns The research project ICEtoFLUX (“HydrologIcal changes in ArctiC Environments and water-driven biogeochemical FLUXes”) was financed by Arctic Research Program “PRA” 2022-2024 and deals with the hydrological characterization of the arctic environment. The project goal is to quantify the hydrological dynamics and the interactions between the glacier and the river basin with a multidisciplinary approach that includes hydrological, geochemical, microbiological and