Landslide monitoring with high-resolution SAR data in the Three Gorges region

Abstract

Employing the well-known D-InSAR technique, we investigated landslide monitoring in the Three Gorges region using TerraSAR-X data. The experiment demonstrates that using both the amplitude and differential phase allows us to identify the precise location, deformation and time range of occurrence of certain landslides. To overcome the atmospheric effect on D-InSAR results, a time-series analysis was also carried out. The observed nonlinear relationship between the deformation and water level suggests that reservoir water level fluctuation is one of the major causes of landslides, which is significant in terms of issuing landslide warnings. In addition, the comparison of TerraSAR-X and C-band ASAR data results indicates that TerraSAR-X data provide far more reasonable deformation measurements because of their high temporal and spatial resolutions.