Abstract
In the last decade, the Persistent Scatterer Interferometry – PSI have been largely employed to predict instabilities and failure in open pit mines. The PSI is a powerful technique, which combines radar satellite data in order to detect and monitor tiny surface displacements over vast areas. In the last years, the Sentinel-1 radar mission have produced images of the globe acquired with different spatial and temporal resolutions that are now freely available. In recent years, the footwall slopes of the Riacho dos Machados Gold Mine – MRDM (Minas Gerais state, southeastern Brazil) have recorded large planar failures controlled by foliation planes. Therefore, the focus of this paper is to evaluate a stack of 39 Interferometric Wide Sentinel-1 scenes, spanning from January 2018 to April 2019, acquired in descending orbit geometry, for the detection and monitoring of surface displacements in the MRDM. The results have shown that descending IW Sentinel-1 scenes can be used to provide a broad picture of the Line-Of-Sight - LOS deformation phenomena. In order to monitor the evolution of the deformation phenomena induced by mining activities, LOS deformation maps with millimeter accuracy could be only delivered at least each 12 days.
Highlights
In order to anticipate risk situations in mining activities, remote sensing techniques like the Persistent Scatterer Interferometry - PSI have increasingly been used in the last decade (Pinto et al, 2015; Hartwig, 2016; Hartwig et al, 2013; Colesanti and Wasowski, 2006)
Surface displacements may be induced in three main different ways: 1) due to underground and slope excavations; 2) due to mining waste disposal in waste piles; and 3) due to discarding of mining byproducts after ore concentration in tailings dams
Displacement warning levels are defined usually as low, moderate and high and their limits are updated as new data is compiled during mine life span
Summary
The PSI method consists in combining large sets of complex synthetic aperture radar (SAR) scenes, obtained from different positions both in space and time. The Riacho dos Machados Gold Mine (MRDM) is located in the northeastern portion of the Minas Gerais State (Figure 1) and comprises an open pit mine with almost 100 meters of depth and surface mining area equals to 0,75 km2, mined in decomposed greenish schists oriented NNE-SSW.
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