Barentsburg Borehole 12

Created: 2018-11-30 17:15:15
Modified: 2019-12-31 14:47:42

*Data for 2016-2017 hydrologic year has been added by Sarah Strand as part of the Permafrost thermal state in Svalbard 2017-2018 (PermaSval) project, a research infrastructure access project funded by the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS). Overall and longterm site responsible is Nikita Demidov of AARI (nikdemidov(at)mail.ru).*

The system of long - term permafrost observations was organized on the permafrost site of Russian Scientific Center on Spitsbergen in summer 2016 (Demidov et al., 2016). The monitoring site is established in the vicinity of the mining settlement Barentsburg on a sequence of Holocene marine terraces. The core drilling showed that the thickness of gravel sands and clays with massive and schlieren cryostructure forming the accumulative terraces is of 2 – 7 m. 

Borehole is situated on a flat subhorizontal surface (inclination 2 ° to the NW) of top step of stairs of marine terraces in the vicinity of Barentsburg aerodrom, 95 m a.s.l.. Surface of terrace around drill point has ill-defined pattern structure. Soil is covered by plant cover (~80% of square) or by rocks (~20% of square).  Also near to borehole there were remains of wood and metal tubes which had been used for drilling. In 2017 this remains were cleared away. Geological crossection is represented by fractured sandstone and mudstone overlaid by 2 m of gravelly loam with rocks. This borehole dates by early thirties of XX century when core drilling in the vicinity of Barentsburg was made for the purpose of coal exploration. In this borehole automated thermistor cable 15 m length with spacing 0,75 m inserted to the depth of 15 m is used. Borehole has metal casing for all depth.