Alfio Fumagalli

Permanent Scatterer SAR Interferometry (PSInSAR) aims to identify coherent radar targets exhibiting high phase stability over the entire observation time period. These targets often correspond to point-wise, man-made objects widely available over a city, but less present in non-urban areas. To overcome the limits of PSInSAR, analysis of interferometric data-stacks should aim at extracting geophysical parameters not only from point-wise deterministic objects (i.e., PS), but also from distributed scatterers (DS). Rather than developing hybrid processing chains where two or more algorithms are applied to the same data-stack, and results are then combined, in this paper we introduce a new approach, SqueeSAR, to jointly process PS and DS, taking into account their different statistical behavior. As it will be shown, PS and DS can be jointly processed without the need for significant changes to the traditional PSInSAR processing chain and without the need to unwrap hundreds of interferograms, provided that the coherence matrix associated with each DS is properly “squeezed” to provide a vector of optimum (wrapped) phase values. Results on real SAR data, acquired over an Alpine area, challenging for any InSAR analysis, confirm the effectiveness of this new approach.

Post-event Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) analysis on a stack of 45 C-band SAR images acquired by the ESA Sentinel-1 satellites from 9 October 2014 to 19 June 2017 allowed the identification of a clear precursory deformation signal for the Maoxian landslide (Mao County, Sichuan Province, China). The landslide occurred in the early morning of 24 June 2017 and killed more than 100 people in the village of Xinmo. Sentinel-1 images have been processed through an advanced multi-interferogram analysis capable of maximising the density of measurement points, generating ground deformation maps and displacement time series for an area of 460 km2 straddling the Minjiang River and the Songping Gully. InSAR data clearly show the precursors of the slope failure in the source area of the Maoxian landslide, with a maximum displacement rate detected of 27 mm/year along the line of sight of the satellite. Deformation time series of measurement points identified within the main scarp of the landslide exhibit an acceleration starting from April 2017. A detailed time series analysis leads to the classification of different deformation behaviours. The Fukuzono method for forecasting the time of failure appear to be applicable to the displacement data exhibiting progressive acceleration. Results suggest that satellite radar data, systematically acquired over large areas with short revisiting time, could be used not only as a tool for mapping unstable areas, but also for landslide monitoring, at least for some typologies of sliding phenomena.

Coastal regions are increasingly affected by larger storms and rising sea level predicted by global warming models, aggravating the situation in the city of Venice where tidal‐induced seasonal flooding coupled with natural and anthropogenic subsidence have been perennial problems. In light of accelerated efforts to protect Venice from the rise in sea level we assess land subsidence in the Venice Lagoon over the last decade. Through a combined analysis of GPS position time series from 2001.55 to 2011.00 for four stations installed by the Magistrato alle Acque di Venezia and thousands of observations of InSAR permanent scatterers using RADARSAT‐1 images from 2003.3 to 2007.85, we determine that the northern lagoon subsides at a rate of 2–3 mm/yr, whereas the southern lagoon subsides at 3–4 mm/yr. The city of Venice continues to subside, at a rate of 1–2 mm/yr, in contrast to geodetic studies in the last decade of the 20th Century suggesting that subsidence has been stabilized. The GPS results indicate a general eastward tilt in subsidence and that the natural subsidence rate related to the retreat of the Adriatic plate subducting beneath the Apennines is at least 0.4–0.6 mm/yr. Our combined GPS and InSAR analysis demonstrates high spatial resolution in the vertical direction with a precision of 0.1–0.2 mm/yr with respect to a global reference frame. Continued efforts to secure the city of Venice from flooding must also take into account the significant local and regional subsidence rates as well as the expected rise in sea level.