Mapping Two-Dimensional Deformation Field Time-Series of Large Slope by Coupling DInSAR-SBAS with MAI-SBAS

Mapping deformation field time-series, including vertical and horizontal motions, is vital for landslide monitoring and slope safety assessment. However, the conventional differential synthetic aperture radar interferometry (DInSAR) technique can only detect the displacement component in the satellite-to-ground direction, i.e., line-of-sight (LOS) direction displacement. To overcome this constraint, a new method was developed to obtain the displacement field time series of a slope by coupling DInSAR based small baseline subset approach (DInSAR-SBAS) with multiple-aperture InSAR (MAI) based small baseline subset approach (MAI-SBAS). This novel method has been applied to a set of 11 observations from the phased array type L-band synthetic aperture radar (PALSAR) sensor onboard the advanced land observing satellite (ALOS), spanning from 2007 to 2011, of two large-scale north–south slopes of the largest Asian open-pit mine in the Northeast of China. The retrieved displacement time series showed that the proposed method can detect and measure the large displacements that occurred along the north–south direction, and the gradually changing two-dimensional displacement fields. Moreover, we verified this new method by comparing the displacement results to global positioning system (GPS) measurements. OPEN ACCESS Remote Sens. 2015, 7 12441