Monitoring of ground movement in open pit iron mines of Carajas Province (Amazon region) based on A-DInSAR techniques using TerraSAR-X data

Author(s)

Silva, Guilherme Gregorio ; Mura, Jose Claudio ; Paradella, Waldir Renato ; Gama, Fabio Furlan ; Temporim, Filipe Altoe

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: JOURNAL OF APPLIED REMOTE SENSING; v. 11, JUN 5 2017.
• Web of Science Citations: 1

Abstract

Persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI) analysis of a large area is always a challenging task regarding the removal of the atmospheric phase component. This work presents an investigation of ground movement measurements based on a combination of differential SAR interferometry time-series (DTS) and PSI techniques, applied on a large area of extent with open pit iron mines located in Carajas (Brazilian Amazon Region), aiming at detecting linear and nonlinear ground movement. These mines have presented a history of instability, and surface monitoring measurements over sectors of the mines (pit walls) have been carried out based on ground-based radar and total station (prisms). Using a priori information regarding the topographic phase error and a phase displacement model derived from DTS, temporal phase unwrapping in the PSI processing and the removal of the atmospheric phases can be performed more efficiently. A set of 33 TerraSAR-X (TSX-1) images, acquired during the period from March 2012 to April 2013, was used to perform this investigation. The DTS analysis was carried out on a stack of multilook unwrapped interferograms using an extension of SVD to obtain the least-square solution. The height errors and deformation rates provided by the DTS approach were subtracted from the stack of interferograms to perform the PSI analysis. This procedure improved the capability of the PSI analysis for detecting high rates of deformation, as well as increased the numbers of point density of the final results. The proposed methodology showed good results for monitoring surface displacement in a large mining area, which is located in a rain forest environment, providing very useful information about the ground movement for planning and risk control. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. (AU)