Non-Tectonic Geohazards of Guangdong Province, China, Monitored Using Sentinel-1A/B from 2015 to 2022

Abstract

Guangdong Province, home to 21 cities and a permanent population of 127.06 million people, boasts the largest provincial economy in China, contributing 11.76% to the national GDP in 2023. However, it is prone to geological hazards due to its geological conditions, extreme weather, and extensive human activities. Geohazards not only endanger lives but also hinder regional economic development. Monitoring surface deformation regularly can promptly detect geological hazards and allow for effective mitigation strategies. Traditional ground subsidence monitoring methods are insufficient for comprehensive surveys and rapid monitoring of geological hazards in the whole province. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technology using satellite images can achieve wide-area geohazard monitoring. However, current geological hazard monitoring in Guangdong Province based on InSAR technology lacks regional analysis and statistics of surface deformation across the entire province. Furthermore, such monitoring fails to analyze the spatial–temporal characteristics of surface deformation and disaster evolution mechanisms by considering the local geological features. To address these issues, current work utilizes Sentinel-1A/B satellite data covering Guangdong Province from 2015 to 2022 to obtain the wide-area surface deformation in the whole province using the multi-temporal (MT) InSAR technology. Based on the deformation results, a wide-area deformation region automatic identification method is used to identify the surface deformation regions and count the deformation area in each city of Guangdong Province. By analyzing the results, we obtained the following findings: (1) Using the automatic identification algorithm we identified 2394 deformation regions. (2) Surface subsidence is concentrated in the delta regions and reclamation areas; over a 4 cm/year subsidence rate is observed in the hilly regions of northern Guangdong, particularly in mining areas. (3) Surface deformation is closely related to geological structures and human activities. (4) Sentinel-1 satellite C-band imagery is highly effective for wide-area geological hazard monitoring, but has limitations in monitoring small-area geological hazards. In the future, combining the high-spatial–temporal-resolution L-band imagery from the NISAR satellite with Sentinel-1 imagery will allow for comprehensive monitoring and early warning of geological hazards, achieving multiple geometric and platform perspectives for geological hazard monitoring and management in Guangdong Province. The findings of this study have significant reference value for the monitoring and management of geological disasters in Guangdong Province.