Detecting of land subsidence using sbas-insar: A case study in Bursa-Orhaneli lignite coalfield

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar is a new technique used in investigating the deformations occurring on the earth surface. By its capability of providing much broader domain coverage as compared to any other available techniques, researchers are using the interferometric synthetic aperture radar technique in many areas of their research and primarily crustal deformation. The purpose of this study is to observe the deformation impacts on an open-pit mining field located in Bursa/Orhaneli using InSAR technique. 15 scenes acquired between January 2012 and July 2013 by TerraSAR-X satellite were processed in analyses. Coherence between SAR images are unfortunately low due to rural investigation area and absence of persistent scatterers that reflect radar signal. In other words, correlation between SAR images are weak. For this reason, a hazard map covering the whole study area could not be generated. SAR images were processed by ERDAS IMAGINE and ENVI-SARscape software and an attempt was made to detect displacement velocity using SBAS algorithm. Annual subsidence velocity was calculated as about 4 mm in the direction of radar line-of-sight in the vicinity of Gümüşpınar region that has lignite production activity. It was not encountered any vulnerable area affected by deformation over the entire mining field.