Regional-scale monitoring of underwater and dry ground subsidence in high phreatic areas of North China Plain

PLoS One. 2020 Aug 24;15(8):e0237878. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0237878. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Land subsidence monitoring provides information required when developing land use plans and allows for proactive management of subsidence issues. However, it has been challenging to accurately detect land subsidence areas, especially those under waterbodies. This study evaluated the applicability of integrated use of the optical Landsat-8 OLI and microwave Sentinel-1A TOPSAR imagery to delineate subsidence areas and quantify subsidence rates in a typical coal mining area of North China Plain. An Enhanced Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (E-MNDWI) was combined with Short BAseline Subset-Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SBAS-InSAR) image to monitor underwater and dry ground subsidence. The results demonstrated that the method could delineate underwater and dry ground subsidence and quantify its rates accurately. The proposed method estimated subsidence area corresponded to 34.8% (16.7 km2) of the study area. The size of underwater subsidence areas was substantial and accounted for 43.7% of the subsidence areas. Seasonal underwater subsidence areas were generally distributed in the vicinity of perennial ones. Dry ground subsidence covered 9.4 km2 of the study area and generally occurred in urban and rural residential areas with the maximum subsidence of up to 80.1 mm/year. This study demonstrates the efficiency and capacity of integrating optical and microwave images to monitor the subsidence progresses, which thus can help develop effective rehabilitation policy and strategy to mitigate the impacts of land subsidence.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • China
  • Environmental Monitoring*
  • Geography
  • Groundwater*
  • Microwaves
  • Optical Imaging
  • Remote Sensing Technology
  • Satellite Imagery

Grants and funding

Dr. Li: Key Research and Development Program of Shandong Province, grant number 2016ZDJS11A02, http://kjt.shandong.gov.cn/; Dr. Li: Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 41771324, http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/; Dr. Yu: Open Foundation of Key Laboratory of Terrestrial Surface Pattern and Simulation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, grant number LBKF201802, http://www.igsnrr.ac.cn/. The sponsors or funders play no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.