Landslide monitoring with spotlight TerraSAR-X DATA

Abstract

This paper aims to demonstrate that radar-based remote sensing techniques can be as effective as the conventional geotechnical ones for the detection and monitoring of well suited areas. Many of the high mountain landslides are vegetated areas that decorrelate faster at X-band. As in these scenarios the number of coherent scatterers is low and, in addition, the area of interest is usually small, the processing can be benefited of the usage of high-resolution data. This will maximize the chances of detecting persistent scatters coming from both natural targets and man-made structures. The high resolution Spotlight mode of TerraSAR-X is thus the perfect choice as it offers a fine resolution. On the other hand, its 11 days of revisit time and X-band carrier allows the monitoring of small variations in the landslide trend and deal with its variable dynamics.