LopNur once was a huge lake located in northwesternChina.At present, there is no surface water in LopNur Lake basin and on SAR\nimages it looks like an ââ?¬Å?Ear.ââ?¬ÂThe objective of this paper is to retrieve the depth of subsurface brine layer in Lop Nur by copolarized\nphase difference of surface scattering. Based on field investigation and analysis of sample properties, a two-layer scattering structure\nwas proposed with detailed explanations of scattering mechanisms. The relationship between copolarized phase difference and the\nbrine layer depth in the region of Lop Nur were studied. The copolarized phase difference of surface scattering was extracted by\nmodel-based polarimetric decomposition method. A good linear correlation between measured subsurface brine layer depth and\ncopolarized phase difference with R2 reaching 0.82 was found. Furthermore, the subsurface brine layer depth of the entire lake area\nwas analyzed. According to the retrieved maps, some interesting phenomena were found, and several hypotheses about the past\nwater withdrawal process and the environmental evolution had been proposed to theoretically explain these phenomena. Based\non the penetration capability of SAR the reconstruction of historical evolution process of Lop Nur will be an interesting topic for\nfuture research.
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