Monitoring and Stability Analysis of the Deformation in the Woda Landslide Area in Tibet, China by the DS-InSAR Method

Abstract

The Woda area in the upper Jinsha River has steep terrain and broken structures, causing landslide disasters frequently. Here, we used the distributed scatterer interferometric SAR (DS-InSAR) method to monitor and analyze the Woda landslide area. With the DS-InSAR method, we derived the deformation of the Woda landslide area from 106 Sentinel-1A ascending images acquired between 5 November 2014 and 4 September 2019 and 102 Sentinel-1A descending images acquired between 31 October 2014 and 11 September 2019. The obvious advantage of the DS-InSAR method compared to the persistent scatterer (PS) InSAR (PS-InSAR) method is that the densities of the monitoring points were increased by 25.1% and 22.9% in the ascending and descending images, respectively. The two-dimensional deformation of the landslide area shows that the maximum surface deformation rate in the normal direction was −80 mm/yr, and in the east–west direction, 118 mm/yr. According to the rescaled range (R/S) analysis, the Hurst index values of the deformation trends were all greater than 0.5, which means the deformation trend will continue for some time. In addition, we analyzed the influencing factors and the deformation mechanism of the Woda landslide area and found that the surface deformation is closely related to the geological structure and precipitation, among which precipitation is the main factor triggering the deformation. Our monitoring results will help the local government to conduct regular inspections and strengthen landslide disaster prevention in low-coherence mountainous areas.

Keywords

• landslide
• DS-InSAR
• deformation monitoring
• stability analysis