Identifying Land Subsidence Using Global Digital Elevation Models

Abstract

Recent developments in space-based surveying methods of the Earth's topography, including the differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DInSAR), have increased the availability of options for monitoring land subsidence. However, DInSAR methods require expert knowledge and specialized software, and they are time-consuming. Here, we demonstrate that a land subsidence signal can be identified in the differences in the freely available global digital elevation models (e.g., SRTM and TanDEM-X) using a simple statistical method. This finding opens up a venue to develop a computer application to identify land subsidence or uplift of a few decimeters per at least a decade order. Such an application enables monitoring the effects of underground mining, seismic/tectonic movements, landslides, volcanic activities, and similar effects on the Earth's topography. It can also provide a valuable and cost-effective tool for studying land deformation.

Mass movement evaluation in deformed clastic rock with InSAR technique

“…Su et al (2022) used Sentinel‐1 datasets with the Small Baseline Subsets (SBAS) technique to update the landslide inventory for the Hunza Valley in Pakistan and they also identified the borders of the landslides. By comparing the elevation data from 2014 and 2000, Becek et al (2021) developed a method using SBAS to detect mining‐induced land deformation in Türkiye. Using Sentinel‐1 data sets and the SBAS method, Zhu et al (2022) identified the different types of landslides that occurred between 2018 and 2021.…”

Evaluation of Dem Derived by Repeat-Pass X-Band Stripmap Mode Paz Data

“…Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are widely used in different analyses as a geospatial source, including landslide susceptibility (Ada and San 2018), deformation studies (Calò et al, 2018;Abdikan et al 2021), terrain attributes (Gdulova et al, 2020), and geomorphologic analysis (Pasquestti et al, 2019). Thus, the accuracy of the DEMs can play an essential role in the final product of the processes.…”

“…It completed its mission within 11 days in February 2000. Although it was generated two decades before, it provides vertical information for the locations still stable, and it is also used for vertical change detection analysis using other updated global DEMs such as TanDEM-X (Becek et al, 2021). After the launch of TerraSAR-X, several studies used it for DEM generation using a high-resolution repeat-pass stereo radargrammetric approach (Henning et al, 2015) and interferometric approach (Sefercik et al, 2012;Jiang et al, 2014).…”

“…The advantage of the mission is to provide bistatic SAR interferometry to reduce the limitation of repeat-pass interferometry that opened a new era in spaceborne radar imaging (Krieger et al, 2007). This new global DEM data that has about ~12m resolution has been used for different analyses and tested on flat to mountainous regions, such as coastal morphology (Pasquestti et al, 2019), building height models (Misra et al, 2018) and vertical change detection (Becek et al, 2021) The new generation X-band PAZ satellite has been continuing its mission since 2018. It is based on the TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X platform and has identical specifications which aim to create a constellation for short-term image revisit.…”