Abstract
The fragile habitat of alpine mining areas can be greatly affected by surface disturbances caused by mining activities, particularly open-pit mining activities, which greatly affect the periglacial environment. SBAS-InSAR technology enables the processing of SAR images to obtain highly accurate surface deformation information. This paper applied SBAS-InSAR technology to obtain three years of surface subsidence information based on the 89-scene Sentinel-1A SLC products, covering a mining area (tailings and active areas) in the Tianshan Mountains and its surroundings from 25th December 2017 to 2nd January 2021. The data were adopted to analyze the characteristics of deformation in the study region and the mining areas, and the subsidence accumulation was compared with field GNSS observation results to verify its accuracy. The results showed that the study area settled significantly, with a maximum settlement rate of −44.80 mm/a and a maximum uplift rate of 28.04 mm/a. The maximum settlement and accumulation of the whole study area over the three-year period were −129.39 mm and 60.49 mm, respectively. The mining area had a settlement value of over 80 mm over the three years. Significantly, the settlement rates of the tailings and active areas were −35 mm/a and −40 mm/a, respectively. Debris accumulation in the eastern portion of the tailings and active areas near the mountain was serious, with accumulation rates of 25 mm/a and 20 mm/a, respectively, and both had accumulation amounts of around 70 mm. For mine tailing pile areas with river flows, the pile locations and environmental restoration should be appropriately adjusted at a later stage. For gravel pile areas, regular cleaning should be carried out, especially around the mining site and at the tunnel entrances and exits, and long-term deformation monitoring of these areas should be carried out to ensure safe operation of the mining site. The SBAS-InSAR measurements were able to yield deformations with high accuracies over a wide area and cost less human and financial resources than the GNSS measurement method. Furthermore, the measurement results were more macroscopic, with great application value for surface subsidence monitoring in alpine areas.
Highlights
Mining activity can cause surface deformations and negatively impacts the environment [1, 2]
To understand the dynamic changes of subsidence in alpine mining areas, this study focuses on a mining area in the Tianshan Mountains of China as the research object, which consists of 89 scenes of Sentinel-1A level-1 single look complex (SLC) data processed via SBAS-interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technology to obtain the surface subsidence [35] information of the area. e subsidence information is analyzed to understand surface subsidence around the mining site and to provide recommendations for mining activities. e cumulative deformation information is compared with data obtained from in situ global navigation satellite system (GNSS) measurements to verify the accuracy of SBAS-InSAR technology for surface deformation monitoring and subsidence measurements in alpine mining areas
E image from 21st October 2018 was identified as the super master image, and the remaining images were paired with this master image for interferometric processing, which resulted in 1029 pairs of interferometric images (Figure 5). e maximum absolute normal baseline was 116.56 m, the minimum absolute baseline was 0.71 m, and the average was 50.51 m. e time baseline ranged from 12 d to 180 d. e results of processing indicated that the data were sufficient for use in the SBASInSAR process and they contained little decoherence
Summary
Mining activity can cause surface deformations and negatively impacts the environment [1, 2]. E key to solving these problems is to provide theoretical support for decisionmaking based on a large amount of basic data such as surface deformation data. Ground settlement [6] data provide an understanding of changes in mining areas and the surrounding environment, contributing to their sustainable development. With the development of computer technology, remote sensing (RS), and geographic information system (GIS) technology [7,8,9], increasingly more novel geographic analysis methods [10,11,12] have been used for the dynamic monitoring of surface subsidence in mining areas, among which monitoring based on interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technology [13,14,15] has performed excellently. Deformation measurements based on InSAR have becoming increasingly popular [21]
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