Abstract

The ground subsidence that occurred in the abandoned coal mining area, Gaeun, Korea, was observed using 25 JERS-1 SAR interferograms from November 1992 to October 1998. We carried out measurements on a subset of image pixels corresponding to point-wise stable reflectors(PS: permanent scatterer) by exploiting a long temporal series of interferometric phases and compared it with the distribution map of in situ examined crack level. PSs could be identified by means of amplitude dispersion index and coherence of the interferograms and the density of PS was much higher in an urban area than in a mountainous region. The measured subsidence rate represented the average velocity in a period of image acquisition and excluded complex nonlinear displacements such as an abrupt collapse. The mean line-of-sight velocity in the study area is 0.19cm/yr and the estimation error is 0.18cm/yr. The center of the abandoned Gaeun coal mine(0.49cm/yr) and the area opposite Gaeun station(1.66cm/yr) were observed as the most highly subsiding areas.

Keywords Gaeun, JERS-1, mine, PSInSAR, subsidence