Land Surface Movement Driven by Groundwater Dynamics

Abstract

Summary Land surface subsidence is a catastrophic phenomenon that leads to a loss of lives and infrastructures. In arid climates, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), water resources are limited and rely on groundwater as the main water resource for domestic and agricultural sectors. The increasing demand for water in the country results in overexploiting the groundwater resources which can be the main cause for land surface subsidence. Monitoring of land surface subsidence can be achieved by various techniques such as leveling survey, Global Positioning System (GPS), and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) techniques. In this study, the InSAR technique has been implemented with the Sentinel-1A images to monitor land surface subsidence over the agricultural areas in the UAE between 2015 and 2019. The results showed significant ground subsidence in spatial accordance with agricultural farms. Furthermore, the detected subsidence has been confirmed by field observation of infrastructure failures over the deformed area.