Investigation of a Small Landslide in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau by InSAR and Absolute Deformation Model

Junming Hao; Tonghua Wu; Xiaodong Wu; Guojie Hu; Defu Zou; Xiaofan Zhu; Lin Zhao; Ren Li; Changwei Xie; Jie Ni; Cheng Yang; Xiangfei Li; Wensi Ma

doi:10.3390/rs11182126

Remote Sensing (Sep 2019)

Investigation of a Small Landslide in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau by InSAR and Absolute Deformation Model

Junming Hao,
Tonghua Wu,
Xiaodong Wu,
Guojie Hu,
Defu Zou,
Xiaofan Zhu,
Lin Zhao,
Ren Li,
Changwei Xie,
Jie Ni,
Cheng Yang,
Xiangfei Li,
Wensi Ma

Affiliations

Junming Hao: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Tonghua Wu: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Xiaodong Wu: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Guojie Hu: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Defu Zou: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Xiaofan Zhu: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Lin Zhao: School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Ren Li: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Changwei Xie: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Jie Ni: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Cheng Yang: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Xiangfei Li: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Wensi Ma: Cryosphere Research Station on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11182126
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 11, no. 18
p. 2126

Abstract

Read online

Landslides are one of the major geohazards in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and have recently increased in both frequency and size. SAR interferometry (InSAR) has been widely applied in landslide research, but studies on monitoring small-scale landslides are rare. In this study, we investigated the performance of Small Baseline Subsets method (SBAS) in monitoring small-scale landslide and further developed a new deformation model to obtain the absolute deformation time series. The results showed that SBAS could well capture the small-scale landslide characteristics including spatiotemporal abnormal displacement and progressive failure processes. The newly developed absolute deformation model further detected the process of landslide details, such as instances of noticeable creeps induced by rainfall and snowmelt. Finally, a conceptual model of the kinematics-based failure mechanism for small-scale landslide was proposed. This study extended the monitoring capability of InSAR and improved our knowledge on the deformation in the frozen ground regions.

Published in Remote Sensing

ISSN: 2072-4292 (Online)
Publisher: MDPI AG
Country of publisher: Switzerland
LCC subjects: Science
Website: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/

About the journal

Abstract

Keywords