Using Small Baseline SAR Interferometry to Investigate Land Subsidence Induced by Underground Coal Mining

This work presents the application of SAR interferometry for coal mining induced land subsidence investigation and monitoring. Since mining subsidence characterized with, e. g., high rate, relatively small extent and significant nonlinear temporal evolution, it requires a dense spatial sample and a temporal frequent measurement. For SAR data processing, a small baseline interferogram strategy is adopted and the SAR data pairs with a small spatial baseline and short time span are combined to generate differential interferomgrams with good coherence, and consequently to measure the subsidence and derive the temporal evolution process. We use the available ENVISAT ASAR data acquired from 2004 to 2005 for analyzing the subsidence of Kailuan coal field. The InSAR derived subsidence is compared with the result from the classical mining subsidence prediction model and the result shows a good agreement. For operational purpose, the relation between InSAR parameter and the deformation spatial-temporal pattern are discussed.