Abstract
ABSTRACT: Carajás Mineral Province, Amazon region, is the most important one in Brazil. Vale S.A. Company has the right to operate in the area of the N5E mine. The work is conducted on rock alteration products of low geomechanical quality related to sandstones, siltstones, and a lateritic cover. In order to monitor ground deformation, 33 TerraSAR-X images covering the period of March 2012-April 2013 were used in the investigation. An interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) approach based on permanent scatterer interferometry (PSI) using an interferometric point target analysis algorithm was applied. Results demonstrated that most of the area was considered stable during the time span of the image acquisition. However, persistent scatterers (PSs) with high deformation rates were mapped over a landfill probably related to settlements. To validate the PSI data, graphs were generated with the displaced information based on topographic measurements in the field. The graphs showed that the surface deformations during TSX-1 runway coverage are within the miner’s safety threshold and do not present a risk of major problems. The PSI data provided a synoptic and detailed view of the deformation process that affects the mining complex without the need of field campaign or instrumentation.
Highlights
The Brazilian mining industry is very diverse, with at least 55 mineral commodities currently explored in the country (DNPM 2015)
We present the results of the application of interferometry persistent scatterer (PSI) for surface displacement mapping in N5E iron mine, using TerraSAR-X (TSX-1) data
The PSs distribution was not homogeneous, since there was no PSs in vegetation areas, while detection was very good in the mining areas
Summary
The Brazilian mining industry is very diverse, with at least 55 mineral commodities currently explored in the country (DNPM 2015). The interferometry technique using Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is based on a combination of two SAR complex images (SLC) acquired over the same area with a somewhat different acquisition geometries to ensure a phase difference (interference) between the scenes (Zebker and Villasenor, 1992) With this approach, it is possible to extract surface displacement along the Line of Sight (LoS) of the SAR for common pixels in the same position on the ground. The Carajás Mineral Province (CMP) is the most important of Brazil and includes the largest iron deposits in the world; it is located on the eastern border of the Amazon, in the state of Pará It covers an area of 120,000 km and is marked by mountainous terrain, characterized by a set of hills and plateaus (altitude 500–900 m), surrounded by plains to the south and north (altitude around 200 m), with deep chemical weathering, which produced thick layer of latosols, fully covered by tropical forest communities of Ombrophilous Equatorial species (Paradella et al 1994).
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