Land Subsidence in Xiong’an New Area, China Revealed by InSAR Observations

Abstract

In 2017, China’s central government approved the national strategy to build Xiong’an New Area (XNA, 100km southwest to Beijing), which was announced as a “millennium strategy” and a “demo area” for a sustainable, modern, and innovative urban model. Xiong’an will draw in as much as $380 billion investment and is expected to help accelerate the development of the wider Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jingjinji) Area. In this paper, present subsidence in the XNA area is investigated using InSAR observations for the first time. The 24 SAR images acquired by European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites during the period from June 2017 to July 2018 suggest that in the north of Xiong County, the subsidence rate reaches up to 90mm/y, which is highly correlated with the exploitation of geothermal drilling. As the construction in the XNA area will significantly accelerate and its high-quality development, the InSAR findings could provide valuable information for future sustainable urban planning and underground infrastructure construction.

Keywords

• |xiong’an new area|subsidence|insar|geothermal heating|sentinel-1