Land subsidence, Ground Fissures and Buried Faults: InSAR Monitoring of Ciudad Guzmán (Jalisco, Mexico)

Abstract

Abstract:We study land subsidence processes and the associated ground fissuring, affecting an active graben filled by thick unconsolidated deposits by means of InSAR techniques and fieldwork. On 21 September 2012, Ciudad Guzmán (Jalisco, Mexico) was struck by ground fissures of about 1.5 km of length, causing the deformation of the roads and the propagation of fissures in adjacent buildings. The field survey showed that fissures alignment is coincident with the escarpments produced on 19 September 1985, when a strong earthquake with magnitude 8.1 struck central Mexico. In order to detect and map the spatio-temporal features of the processes that led to the 2012 ground fissures, we applied InSAR multitemporal techniques to process ENVISAT-ASAR and RADARSAT-2 satellite SAR images acquired between 2003 and 2012. We detect up to 20 mm/year of subsidence of the northwestern part of Ciudad Guzmán. These incremental movements are consistent with the OPEN ACCESS Remote Sens. 2015, 7 8611 ground fissures observed in 2012. Based on interferometric results, field data and 2D numerical model, we suggest that ground deformations and fissuring are due to the presence of areal subsidence correlated with variable sediment thickness and differential compaction, partly driven by the exploitation of the aquifers and controlled by the distribution and position of buried faults.

Land Subsidence and Ground Fissures in Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA): Evidence from Quasi-PS InSAR Analysis

“…The InSAR technique can also monitor the ground deformation caused by human activities (e.g., mining [26,27], delta sinking [28], and land subsidence [29][30][31][32]). Ground fissure is commonly a secondary environmental geological problem caused by land subsidence [33] and the InSAR technique can provide a new tool for investigating ground fissure activity [34,35]. Compared with the conventional ground-based measurement methods on sparse points, such as differential GPS and leveling, InSAR can determine a planar observation on a large scale with high precision and low cost [30].…”

A multiscale approach for detection and mapping differential subsidence using multi-platform InSAR products

“…We perform single-interferogram processing using the Delft object-oriented radar interferometric software (Doris) (Kampes et al, 2004) and time series processing using either the Stanford Method for Persistent Scatterers (StaMPS) (Hooper et al, 2007) or the Miami InSAR time-series software in Python (MintPy) (Yunjun et al, 2019). Additionally, we perform post-processing of the InSAR velocity maps results using subsidence gradient (Cabral-Cano et al, 2008) or band pass filtering (Solano-Rojas, 2018).…”

“…Gambolati and Teatini, 2015;Semple et al, 2017). Central Mexico alone, has more than twenty urban areas reported as subsiding (Brunori et al, 2015;Cabral-Cano et al, 2008;Chaussard et al, 2017;Pacheco-Martínez et al, 2015). More importantly, spatial variation of subsidence in several of such locations has led to differential subsidence and, consequently, to ground faulting and infrastructure damage (Avila-Olivera and Garduño-Monroy, 2008;Pacheco-Martínez et al, 2013).…”

Monitoring urban land surface deformation (2004–2010) from InSAR, groundwater and levelling data: A case study of Changzhou city, China

“…Human activities that excessively exploit groundwater give rise to areas with serious land deformations worldwide (Baek et al 2008;Conway 2015;Faunt et al 2015;Castellazzi et al 2016;Hwang et al 2016;Notti et al 2016). In urban areas, land deformation can result in extensive damage to infrastructure such as highways, bridges, 1 buildings, pipelines and subways (Ma et al 2010;Dong et al (2014); Chaussard et al 2014;Brunori et al 2015). In coastal cities, land subsidence increases the risks of flooding and seawater intrusion (Abidin et al 2013;Hallegatte et al 2013;Conway 2015).…”