Abstract
Abstract. The area of Northern Bohemian coal basin is rich in brown coal. Part of it is undermined, but large areas were mined using open-pit mines. There are numerous reclaimed waste dumps here, with a horse racetrack, roads and in some cases also houses. However, on most of the waste dumps, there are forests, meadows and fields. Above the coal basin, there are the Ore mountains which are suspected to be sliding down to the open mines below them. We installed 11 corner reflectors in the area and monitor them using the TerraSAR-X satellite. One of the reflectors is situated in the area of radar layover, therefore it cannot be processed. We present preliminary results of monitoring the remaining corner reflectors, with the use of 7 TerraSAR-X scenes acquired between June and December 2011. We process whole scene crops, as well as the artificial reflector information alone. Our scene set contains interferometric pairs with perpendicular baselines reaching from 0 to 150 m. Such a configuration allows us to distinguish deformations from DEM errors, which are usual when the SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) DEM (X-band) is used for Stripmap data. Unfortunately, most of the area of interest is decorrelated due to vegetation that covers both the Ore mountains and the reclaimed waste dumps. We had to enlarge the scene crop in order to be able to distinguish deformations from the atmospheric delay. We are still not certain about the stability of some regions. For the installed artificial reflectors, the expected deformations are in the order of mm/year. Generally, deformations in the area of interest may reach up to about 5 cm/year for the Ervěnice corridor (a road and railway built on a waste dump). When processing artificial corner reflector information alone, we check triangular sums and perform the processing for all possible point combinations – and that allows us to correct for some unwrapping errors. However, the problem is highly ambiguous.
Highlights
The history of brown-coal mining in the Northern-Bohemian coal basin is very long
In order to monitor this slide, 11 artificial reflectors were installed in the area
Five of the corner reflectors are situated in various built-up areas in the region, one is situated almost in the center of the open mine, two are just below the Ore mountains and two are in the slope of the Ore mountains
Summary
The history of brown-coal mining in the Northern-Bohemian coal basin is very long. Since the 15th century, people have tried various ways of mining the coal — and the area is full of old “wild” mines, deep mines (usually from the beginning of the 20th century), and since about 1950s, there are huge open-pit mines with large waste dumps. Stable areas are very small, with lava on top of the coal making mining very difficult; such places are built-up to form villages, towns, industrial zones etc. In order to monitor this slide, 11 artificial reflectors were installed in the area. The reflectors were oriented in order to be monitored by the TerraSAR-X satellite (Stripmap mode with resolution of about 3x3 meters) in the descending pass, and regularly cleaned (a day before the pass because the passes are performed early in the morning). Five of the corner reflectors are situated in various built-up areas in the region, one is situated almost in the center of the open mine (on a rock), two are just below the Ore mountains and two are in the slope of the Ore mountains (one of them cannot be seen due to the radar artefacts). The expected deformations are low for the reflectors, in the order of millimeters per year, and the acquisitions are performed usually once per 33 days
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
