Integration of differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar and persistent scatterer interferometric approaches to assess deformation in enshi city, hubei, China

Abstract

Land surface deformation can severely damage socioeconomic living conditions around the world. This study aimed to identify the Shaziba landslide and further assess deformation activities in Enshi city. For this purpose, the sentinel-1 C-bands data acquired in ascending directions were processed with Sentinel Application Platform and Stanford Method for Persistent Scatterers (StaMPS) software packages. Our results revealed the location of a landslide that occurred on 21 July 2020 in the Shaziba area, Enshi Prefecture. More interesting deformation results were found in Enshi city for the first time with a deformation range from −51.6 to 54.2 mm/year. We conducted a thorough observation of different urban infrastructures such as commercial and residential buildings, roads, bridges, and airports in Enshi city and along the Qingjiang River to evaluate land surface deformation. Observations revealed that there are a number of influencing factors contributing to disturbing the natural environment and resources in Enshi Prefecture. Of these influencing factors, intensive rainfall is a major cause as are the infiltration of rainfall into the subsurface Silurian strata together with the load of infrastructure in the study area. If this issue is not addressed it could lead to devastating geo-hazard disasters in the future. Scientific approaches to determine various causes of frequent geo-hazards in this region are of great significance for developing early warning systems for disasters and ensuring the safety of residents’ lives and property.