Detecting, mapping and monitoring of land subsidence in Jharia Coalfield, Jharkhand, India by spaceborne differential interferometric SAR, GPS and precision levelling techniques

Abstract

The study aims at detection, mapping and monitoring of land subsidence in Jharia Coalfield, Jharkhand, India by spaceborne DInSAR, GPS and precision levelling techniques. Using multi-frequency C-and L-band DInSAR, both slowly and rapidly subsiding areas were identified and DInSAR-based subsidence maps were prepared. C-band DInSAR was found useful for detection of slowly subsiding areas whereas L-band DInSAR for rapidly subsiding and/or adverse land cover areas. Due to dynamic nature of mining and adverse land cover, temporal decorrelation poses a serious problem particularly in C-band DInSAR. Specially designed InSAR coherence guided adaptive filtering was found useful to highlight the deformation fringes. Collateral GPS and levelling observations were conducted in three test sites to validate DInSAR measurements and to determine the net displacement vectors. We observed an appreciable horizontal displacement component of land subsidence in all the test sites. For comparison of results, we calculated InSAR coherence weighted LOS displacement rates from the unwrapped differential interferograms of smaller spatial subsets and LOS projected ground-based displacement rates in three test sites. We found good agreement between DInSAR and ground-based measurements except for C-band observation in Dobari test site primarily due to large difference in observation periods and temporally inconsistent land subsidence. Collateral spaceborne and ground-based observations were also found useful for characterization of subsidence phenomena to determine net displacement vector and horizontal displacement component. In coal mining areas with spatially scattered and temporally irregular land subsidence phenomena, the adopted methodology can be used successfully for detection, mapping and monitoring of the subsiding areas vulnerable to future collapse. This will facilitate efficient planning and designing of surface infrastructures and other developmental structures in the mining areas and mitigation management of subsidence induced hazards.

LAND SUBSIDENCE MONITORING USING PS-InSAR TECHNIQUE FOR L-BAND SAR DATA

“…It has been observed that for the same test site the subsidence rate obtained from D-InSAR processing is coming very close to the PS-InSAR displacement rate. The value obtained for Jamadoba Test site using D-InSAR is coming value of 39.04 cm/yr (R. S. Chatterjee et al, 2015).…”

Detecting and Analyzing the Evolution of Subsidence Due to Coal Fires in Jharia Coalfield, India Using Sentinel-1 SAR Data

“…Thereby, unless any geophysical phenomenon causing substantial surface deformation oriented in NS direction, LOS measurements from Sentinel-1 can be assumed to consist of surface deformation in vertical and EW direction. From the field knowledge and literature survey, we do not find any phenomenon in JCF that causes substantial subsidence only in NS direction [38]. Hence, we have modified the 3D model to a 2D model by neglecting the surface deformation in NS direction.…”

“…As an alternative, the potential of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) was explored for coal fire mapping [38][39][40]. While overcoming the limitations of TIRbased studies and mapping geo-environmental indicators, InSAR also delivers additional advantages in coal fire mapping.…”

Crustal Deformation Studies using Synthetic Aperture Interferometry

“…Bhattacharya et al (2012) estimated interseismic deformation along parts of Himalayan Frontal thrust using InSAR technique. Further, this technique was also used to map surface deformation associated with fluid extraction (Chatterjee et al, 2006), land mining (Chatterjee et al, 2015), landslide motion (Bhattacharya et al, 2015;Bhattacharya and Mukherjee, 2016), geomorphic changes (Majumdar, 2013) and glacier dynamics (Rao, 2011;Saraswat, et al, 2013;Satyabala, 2016). In this article we report and review the recent contributions on earthquake deformation studies from Indian researchers using the InSAR technique.…”