Use of persistent scatterer InSAR within terrafirma landslide services

Abstract

Landslide Services of the pan-European project Terrafirma are presented. LandSlide Inventory (LSI) and LandSlide Monitoring (LSM) exploit satellite Persistent Scatterer InSAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry) to monitor extremely to very slow moving landslides at both regional and local scale. Validated case studies of LSI in the Upper Tena Valley (Central Pyrenees, Spain) and LSM in Val Lumnez (Switzerland) are described. 14 TerraSAR-X descending images acquired in May-October 2008 are processed with the Stable Point Network (SPN) technique, and used to update the landslide inventory of the Upper Tena Valley, significantly improving the pre-existing landslide mapping. 68 ERS1/2 and ENVISAT ascending scenes, acquired in May 1992-October 2005 and processed with the Interferometric Point Target Analysis (IPTA) technique, are combined with topographic levelling measurements performed in 1887-1992, and exploited to monitor the Val Lumnez landslide and to improve the geomorphologic zonation. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.