Long-term subsidence over the Upper Silesia Coal Basin identified on differential LIDAR (2012–2021) and InSAR (2015–2020) data

Abstract

We pro vide a map of sub si dence caused by un der ground min ing in Up per Silesia, which hosts the larg est coal ba sin in Poland. The map com bines data ob tained us ing two InSAR pro cess ing tech niques and dif fer en tial LIDAR data. Per sis tent Scatterer In ter fer om e try and Dif fer en tial SAR In ter fer om e try tech niques were ap plied on im ages from the Sen ti nel-1 sat el lite cov er ing a six-year pe riod from 2015 to 2020. As a re sult, 132 sub si dence ar eas af fected by de for ma tion of >5 mm/year cover ing 430 km 2 were de ter mined. Ad di tion ally, a dif fer en tial LIDAR model cov er ing the pe riod 2012-2021 was an a lyzed, where 103 sub si dence ar eas were iden ti fied, of a to tal area of 88 km 2 and where the larg est re corded de for ma tion value exceeded 10 m. De spite the large time dif fer ence be tween the two sub si dence datasets, good cor re la tion of the data re gard ing the lo ca tion and shape of the troughs was ob served. How ever, com par i son of InSAR and LIDAR data showed a large un deres ti ma tion by DInSAR of val ues of sub si dence in the cen tral parts of the bas ins. We show the po ten tial of Sen ti nel-1 and LIDAR data to de ter mine dis place ments tak ing place over large ar eas and over long pe ri ods, as a sup ple ment to tra di tional mea sure ment meth ods.