Countrywide Monitoring of Ground Deformation Using InSAR Time Series: A Case Study from Qatar

Abstract

Over the past few decades the country of Qatar has been one of the fastest growing economies in the Middle East; it has witnessed a rapid increase in its population, growth of its urban centers, and development of its natural resources. These anthropogenic activities compounded with natural forcings (e.g., climate change) will most likely introduce environmental effects that should be assessed. In this manuscript, we identify and assess one of these effects, namely, ground deformation over the entire country of Qatar. We use the Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) InSAR time series approach in conjunction with ALOS Palsar-1 (Jan. 2007 to Mar. 2011) and Sentinel-1 (Mar. 2017 to Dec. 2019) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) datasets to assess ground deformation and conduct spatial and temporal correlations between the observed deformation with relevant datasets to identify the controlling factors. The findings indicate: (1) the deformation products revealed areas of subsidence and uplift with high vertical velocities of up to 35 mm/yr; (2) the deformation rates were consistent with those extracted from the continuously operating reference GPS stations of Qatar; (3) many inland and coastal sabkhas (salt flats) showed evidence for uplift (up to 35 mm/yr) due to the continuous evaporation of the saline waters within the sabkhas and the deposition of the evaporites in the surficial and near-surficial sabkha sediments; (4) the increased precipitation during Sentinel-1 period compared to the ALOS Palsar-1 period led to a rise in groundwater levels and an increase in the areas occupied by surface water within the sabkhas, which in turn increased the rate of deposition of the evaporitic sediments; (5) high subsidence rates (up to 14 mm/yr) were detected over landfills and dumpsites, caused by mechanical compaction and biochemical processes; and (6) the deformation rates over areas surrounding known sinkhole locations were low (+/−2 mm/yr). We suggest that this study can pave the way to similar countrywide studies over the remaining Arabian Peninsula countries and to the development of a ground motion monitoring system for the entire Arabian Peninsula.

Urban Surface Deformation Management: Assessing Dangerous Subsidence Areas through Regional Surface Deformation, Natural Factors, and Human Activities

“…The problem of urban surface deformation is a common problem in today's world, which seriously threatens the basic buildings of the city and our personal safety [1][2][3]. The causes of urban surface deformation include human factors and natural factors [4][5][6]. Human factors are mainly caused by the construction needs of urbanization, which can be traced back for a long time.…”

Monitoring and Quantitative Human Risk Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste Landfill Using Integrated Satellite–UAV–Ground Survey Approach

“…The InSAR technique, UAV photogrammetry, and ground measurements are quite commonly used for natural geological hazards such as volcanic activities, earthquakes, and landslides [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][15][16][17][18]25,41]. The individual or combined operation of these technologies has also been applied in urban settlement monitoring [6,42,43] and relatively stable landfill deformation monitoring [18,44]. However, the ISUGS approach had never been used for landfills in operation due to problems of low spatiotemporal relativity, data verification, and joint solution of site deformation.…”

Research on Deformation Monitoring of Invert Uplifts in Soft Rock Tunnels Based on 3D Laser Scanning

“…It is difficult to accurately and completely reflect the three-dimensional deformation of the tunnel inverted arch uplift, which has certain limitations. Emil et al [9] used the small baseline subset InSAR time series method combined with the ALOS Palsar-1 and Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar data sets to evaluate the tunnel uplift deformation and used spatiotemporal correlation between the observed deformation and the relevant data sets to identify control factors, effectively monitoring tunnel inverted arch uplift deformations. However, this method is easily affected by terrain, weather, and other factors, which leads to certain restrictions of this method and does not have universality.…”