TY - JOUR

T1 - Water Migration and Segregated Ice Formation in Frozen Ground

T2 - Current Advances and Future Perspectives

AU - Fu, Ziteng

AU - Wu, Qingbai

AU - Zhang, Wenxin

AU - He, Hailong

AU - Wang, Luyang

N1 - CENPERMOA[2022] Funding Information: This work was supported by the Key Program for Frontier Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant numbers QYZDJ-SSW-DQC011), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 41690144), the funding by the Swedish Nation Space Agency 209/19 and Swedish Research Council VR 2020-05338, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 41877015). Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2022 Fu, Wu, Zhang, He and Wang.

PY - 2022/2/10

Y1 - 2022/2/10

N2 - A characteristic of frozen ground is a tendency to form banded sequences of particle-free ice lenses separated by layers of ice-infiltrated soil, which produce frost heave. In permafrost, the deformation of the ground surface caused by segregated ice harms engineering facilities and has considerable influences on regional hydrology, ecology, and climate changes. For predicting the impacts of permafrost degradation under global warming and segregated ice transformation on engineering and environmental, establishing appropriate mathematical models to describe water migration and ice behavior in frozen soil is necessary. This requires an essential understanding of water migration and segregated ice formation in frozen ground. This article reviewed mechanisms of water migration and ice formation in frozen soils and their model construction and introduced the effects of segregated ice on the permafrost environment included landforms, regional hydrological patterns, and ecosystems. Currently, the soil water potential has been widely accepted to characterize the energy state of liquid water, to further study the direction and water flux of water moisture migration. Models aimed to describe the dynamics of ice formation have successfully predicted the macroscopic processes of segregated ice, such as the rigid ice model and segregation potential model, which has been widely used and further developed. However, some difficulties to describe their theoretical basis of microscope physics still need further study. Besides, how to describe the ice lens in the landscape models is another interesting challenge that helps to understand the interaction between soil ice segregation and the permafrost environment. In the final of this review, some concerns overlooked by current research have been summarized which should be the central focus in future study.

AB - A characteristic of frozen ground is a tendency to form banded sequences of particle-free ice lenses separated by layers of ice-infiltrated soil, which produce frost heave. In permafrost, the deformation of the ground surface caused by segregated ice harms engineering facilities and has considerable influences on regional hydrology, ecology, and climate changes. For predicting the impacts of permafrost degradation under global warming and segregated ice transformation on engineering and environmental, establishing appropriate mathematical models to describe water migration and ice behavior in frozen soil is necessary. This requires an essential understanding of water migration and segregated ice formation in frozen ground. This article reviewed mechanisms of water migration and ice formation in frozen soils and their model construction and introduced the effects of segregated ice on the permafrost environment included landforms, regional hydrological patterns, and ecosystems. Currently, the soil water potential has been widely accepted to characterize the energy state of liquid water, to further study the direction and water flux of water moisture migration. Models aimed to describe the dynamics of ice formation have successfully predicted the macroscopic processes of segregated ice, such as the rigid ice model and segregation potential model, which has been widely used and further developed. However, some difficulties to describe their theoretical basis of microscope physics still need further study. Besides, how to describe the ice lens in the landscape models is another interesting challenge that helps to understand the interaction between soil ice segregation and the permafrost environment. In the final of this review, some concerns overlooked by current research have been summarized which should be the central focus in future study.

KW - environment effects

KW - frost heave model

KW - ice lens

KW - permafrost

KW - permafrost modelling

KW - review

U2 - 10.3389/feart.2022.826961

DO - 10.3389/feart.2022.826961

M3 - Review

AN - SCOPUS:85125221016

VL - 10

JO - Frontiers in Earth Science

JF - Frontiers in Earth Science

SN - 2296-6463

M1 - 826961

ER -