Comparison of X-band, L-band and C-band radar images for monitoring subsidence in agricultural regions

Abstract

The ongoing pattern of groundwater induced land subsidence in major valleys and agricultural regions of Iran has been recently documented by several studies (e.g. [1-4]) using C-band Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) observations. In this article we present the results of our research in which we evaluated the performance of C-band, L-band and Xband SAR data, using time-series method of small baseline subset (SBAS), to retrieve long time series of ground subsidence in agricultural regions in the country. Two major groundwater basins have been selected for this purpose: (1) Rafsanjan Valley in the Kerman province of central Iran and (2) Tehran Plain (capital of Iran). We also report on our experience using dualpolarimetry (HH/VV) X-band SAR data for Persistent Scatterer (PS) deformation analysis in natural terrains subject to high rate of deformation.