New Geophysical Approaches to The Study of Subaquatic Permafrost in The Russian Arctic Shelf

Summary Shallow permafrost is associated with significant potential risks for offshore construction and drilling as well as ecological risks that may occur when the permafrost is disturbed due to the human activities. Identification and mapping of the shallow permafrost areas is one of the major tasks of the site survey investigations in the Russian Arctic. Due to the lack of engineering drilling data on the Arctic shelf, remote geological and geophysical studies, such as multichannel high, very-high and ultra-high resolution (HR, VHR and UHR) seismic surveys, are increasingly being used to map and characterize the subaquatic permafrost. In the paper, we present an approach to 3D VHR reflection seismic data interpretation that allowed us to the built a volumetric model of the shallow permafrost and assess its acoustic properties in the shelf of the Kara sea. To our knowledge, this is the first ever demonstrated detailed 3D model of the shallow permafrost in the Russian Artic.