Mapping and characterizing displacements of active loess slopes along the upstream Yellow River with multi-temporal InSAR datasets

Xuguo Shi; Chao Yang; Lu Zhang; Houjun Jiang; Mingsheng Liao; Li Zhang; Xiuguo Liu

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.04.140

Mapping and characterizing displacements of active loess slopes along the upstream Yellow River with multi-temporal InSAR datasets

Sci Total Environ. 2019 Jul 15:674:200-210. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.04.140. Epub 2019 Apr 11.

Authors

Xuguo Shi¹, Chao Yang², Lu Zhang³, Houjun Jiang⁴, Mingsheng Liao⁵, Li Zhang⁵, Xiuguo Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan 430074, China.
² Faculty of Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan 430074, China; National Engineering Research Center of Geographic Information System, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan 430074, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China. Electronic address: luzhang@whu.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Surveying and Geoinformatics, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, 9 Wenyuan Road, Nanjing 210023, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China.

PMID: 31004896
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.04.140

Abstract

Landslides and debris flows in the Loess Plateau pose great threats to human lives and man-made infrastructure, such as buildings and expressways. Thus, the detection and monitoring of the stability of slopes are crucial in geohazard prevention and management. In this study, the time series synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) analysis method that combines persistent scatters (PSs) and distributed scatters (DSs) is employed to detect and map active slopes along the upstream Yellow River from the Longyang Gorge dam to the Lijia Gorge dam using one ALOS PALSAR data stack from 2006 to 2011 and two Sentinel-1 data stacks from 2015 to 2017. More than 100 active slopes in a total coverage of 222.5 km² were identified. Through a time series displacement analysis of active slopes, we found that changes in the water content of loess slopes induced by rainfall or reservoir impoundment might be a major factor that can activate unstable slopes or accelerate the movement of active slopes.

Keywords: Impoundment; Loess Plateau; Loess landslide; Rainfall; Time series InSAR analysis.