Assessment of landslides related land changes using remote sensing techniques

The objective of this study is to assess landslide related surface changes around north of Mersin and Erdemli region using optic and synthetic aperture radar remote sensing data.Multi-temporal landslide inventory mapping studies revealed that numerous old large-scale and recent small-scale landslides were located in the Gilindirez basin. GIS based morphometric analyses suggest that the landslides are more abundant in inequilibrium stage subwatersheds. Geologically, majority of the landslides are located in the ophiolites and ophiolitic mélange units.Unsupervised and supervised classification techniques were performed in order to detect the land use/cover changes caused by landslides using LANDSAT, AVNIR and ASTER sensors for the years 2000, 2007, 2008 and 2009. The comparision of the land use/cover changes with the landslide affected areas were visually interpreted. Landslide related surface deformations were detected over six SAR images of L-band ALOS-PALSAR sensor between 2007 and 2011. In accordance with the landslide geometry and mechanism identical displacements were measured in the main landslide bodies with indications of the secondary movements. Differential SAR interferometry (DInSAR) results depict that average rate of movement for the entire area is extremely slow with a rate of 10 mm/yr.