Phase unwrapping, also known as ambiguity resolu-1 tion, is an underdetermined problem in which assumptions must 2 be made to obtain a result in SAR interferometry (InSAR) time 3 series analysis. This problem is particularly acute for distributed 4 scatterer InSAR, in which noise levels can be so large that 5 they are comparable in magnitude to the signal of investigation. 6 In addition, deformation rates can be highly nonlinear and orders 7 of magnitude larger than neighboring point scatterers, which 8 may be part of a more stable object. The combination of these 9 factors has often proven too challenging for the conventional 10 InSAR processing methods to successfully monitor these regions. 11 We present a methodology which allows for additional environ-12 mental information to be integrated into the phase unwrapping 13 procedure, thereby alleviating the problems described above. 14 We show how problematic epochs that cause errors in the tempo-15 ral phase unwrapping process can be anticipated by the machine 16 learning algorithms which can create categorical predictions 17 about the relative ambiguity level based on the readily available 18 meteorological data. These predictions significantly assist in the 19 interpretation of large changes in the wrapped interferometric 20 phase and enable the monitoring of environments not previously 21 possible using standard minimum gradient phase unwrapping 22 techniques. 23

We present a novel InSAR processing scheme which combines point scatterer (PS) and distributed scatter (DS) approaches in a hybrid framework along with contextual information about the environment under study. Data such as land parcel divisions, precipitation and temperature are integrated into the processing pipeline in order to produce accurate deformation time series estimates of the Dutch peatlands. In addition to these steps, a segmented processing scheme is introduced to manage irreversible losses of coherence in the interferogram stack. Initial results show a promising agreement with in-situ ground truth measurements gathered by extensometer readings of shallow surface deformation.

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