The modern state of radar interferometry using for estimation of the land surface displacements

The article is devoted to radar interferometry as a tool for the work of a geomorphologist engaged in modern landform processes. Differential radar interferometry (DInSAR) is based on radar imaging of the Earth’s surface from spacecraft, whose orbital trajectory is recorded with high accuracy. This makes possible, by measuring the phase difference of the reflected radio signal over the same parts of the Earth’s surface at a fixed time interval, to determine the values of terrain displacements along the line of sight of the satellite sensor, vertical or horizontal lines. This method, despite the fact that it has significant limitations, allows almost realtime tracking of the terrain deformations caused by various geomorphological processes. Traditional applications of InSAR are monitoring of technogenic subsidence or bedding of soil, seimogenic and volcanogenic movements of the surface, landslides and other slope processes, relief cryogenic transformation. At the limit, this method by using radar images in the C-band (for example, the twin satellites Sentinel-1A and -1B), makes possible to distinguish sub-centimeter vertical movements. In this case, the survey frequency is 1–2 weeks, the covered areas can range from hundreds of square meters to tens of thousands of square kilometers, and the specific registered vertical velocities in various publications vary in the range from the first cm / year to 1 m / event, and sometimes more (in the case of earthquakes or landslides). As an example, the result of calculating the rates of displacements of the Earth’s surface in the interfluve of the Yenisei and Bolshaya Kheta is given – they vary over the area from about –3 to +2 cm in a period of less than 2 weeks in July-August 2019, and are associated with fluvial and thermokarst processes.

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