Use of InSAR data for landslide monitoring: a case study from Southern Italy

Use of InSAR techniques in the study of unstable slopes has been suggested in recent works. However, in the case of mass movements, which typically occur in high-relief terrain and are of limited areal extent, the detection of ground surface deformation is difficult. Moreover, the presence of vegetation cover and atmospheric effects introduces coherence loss and resolution problems in the analysis of interferometric pairs. Thus, extreme care must be taken in every step of interferometric SAR processing in order to obtain results that can be easily interpreted and be of practical utility in landslide hazard studies. We present the results of the application of InSAR and DInSAR techniques to a landslide test area located in the Southern Apennines. A number of SAR images was selected, whose dates coincide with periods of mass movement activity documented by in situ controls. DInSAR processing was conducted in order to assess the potential of satellite radar data for landslide monitoring. Coarse resolution is an important limiting factor for effective information extraction. Advanced processing approaches may help to overcome this limit.