Potential of SAR intensity tracking technique to estimate displacement rate in a landslide-prone area in Haridwar region, India

Landslides constitute one of the major natural hazards that could cause significant loss of life and various human settlements. Mansa Devi hill near Haridwar city has encountered with such potential hazard for several years due to the instability of the slopes. Therefore, preparedness both on regional and site-specific basis at spatial level in the form of surface movements is extremely important to diminish the damage of human life and settlements. Though the surface movement measurement through field-based technique is always very accurate, this technique is time-consuming and unfeasible over a widely affected region. Therefore, areal and satellite remote sensing is gaining importance in landslide investigation due to its wide coverage. In recent years, synthetic aperture radar has already proven its potential for mapping ground deformation due to earthquake, landslide, volcano, etc. Therefore, in this study, an attempt has been made to identify the potential landslide-affected region in Mansa Devi area using one multi-temporal SAR technique and intensity tracking technique. Intensity tracking technique has identified significant mass movement in the landslide-affected region where the other conventional multi-temporal technique, SBAS, fails. An error analysis has been carried out in order to demonstrate the applicability of intensity tracking technique. This study demonstrated that intensity tracking can be considered as an alternative to conventional interferometry for the estimation of land surface displacement when latter is limited by loss of coherence due to rapid and incoherent surface movement and/or large acquisition time intervals between the two SAR images.