Abstract
Landslides in reservoir contexts are a well-recognised hazard that may lead to dangerous situations regarding infrastructures and people’s safety. Satellite-based radar interferometry is proving to be a reliable method to monitor the activity of landslides in such contexts. Here, we present a DInSAR (Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) analysis of Sentinel-1 images that exemplifies the usefulness of the technique to recognize and monitor landslides in the Rules Reservoir (Southern Spain). The integration of DInSAR results with a comprehensive geomorphological study allowed us to understand the typology, evolution and triggering factors of three active landslides: Lorenzo-1, Rules Viaduct and El Arrecife. We could distinguish between rotational and translational landslides and, thus, we evaluated the potential hazards related to these typologies, i.e., retrogression (Lorenzo-1 and Rules Viaduct landslides) or catastrophic slope failure (El Arrecife Landslide), respectively. We also observed how changes in the water level of the reservoir influence the landslide’s behaviour. Additionally, we were able to monitor the stability of the Rules Dam as well as detect the deformation of a highway viaduct that crosses a branch of the reservoir. Overall, we consider that other techniques must be applied to continue monitoring the movements, especially in the El Arrecife Landslide, in order to avoid future structural damages and fatalities.
Highlights
Slope instability is a major problem in the planning, design, construction and maintenance of dams and reservoirs [1]
As velocity is estimated along the satellite Line of Sight (LoS) direction, the points of negative values evidence points move away from the satellite, while positive values evidence points move towards the satellite
We distinguished that the Lorenzo-1 and Rules Viaduct landslides are of the rotational type, while the El Arrecife has a translational character
Summary
Slope instability is a major problem in the planning, design, construction and maintenance of dams and reservoirs [1]. After the Vajont case, examples worldwide remind us of this problem: Grand Coulee Reservoir in USA [4], Tabachaca Reservoir in Peru [5], Geheyar Reservoir [6] and Three Gorges Reservoir [7] in China, Nechranice Reservoir in Czech Republic [8], Orava Reservoir in Slovakia [9], Wloclawek Reservoir in Poland [9] and Cortes [10] and Yesa Reservoirs [11] in Spain These are well-documented cases, worth mentioning, in which ground instabilities within reservoirs produced threatening situations. Rapid large landslides in subaerial or submerged portions of reservoir basin slopes can generate catastrophic floods due to the creation of impulse waves of great destructive power (see Gutiérrez et al, 2011 [11]).
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