InSAR Measurements and Viscoelastic Modeling of Sinkhole Precursory Subsidence: Implications for Sinkhole Formation, Early Warning, and Sediment Properties

Abstract

During the past three decades, thousands of sinkholes were formed along the Dead Sea (DS) shorelines in Israel and Jordan, due to dissolution of subsurface salt by undersaturated groundwater. The sinkholes are associated with gradual subsidence preceding their collapse by periods ranging from a few days to almost 5 years. To determine the factors controlling this precursory subsidence, we examine tens of subsidence‐sinkhole sequences along the DS shorelines in Israel. The duration and magnitude of the precursory subsidence are determined by Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) measurements and simulated by viscoelastic damage rheology models. Longer periods of precursory subsidence are found in the cemented alluvial fans and in simulations of higher‐viscosity sediments. While surface subsidence accelerates during the precursory period, the widths of the subsiding areas remain uniform, suggesting that during this period upward propagation of damage from the subsurface cavity is not accompanied by upward migration of the actual cavity. Our observations and simulations are used to constrain the viscosity of the sediments along the DS and to reduce sinkhole hazards by assessing the precursory times of future sinkholes in the different sedimentary environments.

4D Monitoring of Active Sinkholes with a Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS): A Case Study in the Evaporite Karst of the Ebro Valley, NE Spain

“…The performance of these methods are adversely affected by the presence of vegetation. Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) is a very powerful technique that allows the analysis of very large areas with sufficient spatial and temporal resolution to capture precursory subsidence related to small collapse sinkholes e.g., [10,11]. However, the spatial coverage of the displacement data can be significantly reduced by coherence loss (e.g., vegetated areas) [12].…”

Detection of sinkhole occurrence, experiences from South Africa

“…Many researchers (Intrieri et al, 2015;Gutiérrez et al, 2019;Malinowska et al, 2019), mention, that there is a need for an identification of precursory deformation prior to the catastrophic main sinkhole events. Baer et al (2018) suggest that the temporal relationships between subsidence and sinkhole collapse and particularly the factors controlling the duration of the precursory subsidence are still poorly understood.…”

InSAR Detection of Localized Subsidence Induced by Sinkhole Activity in Suburban West-Central Florida

“…Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique is a remote sensing technique that can detect surface movements with high detail, while covering vast ar- eas (Massonnet and Feigl, 1998;Bürgmann et al, 2000;Rosen et al, 2000). The technique has been successfully applied to observe sinkhole activity in arid places such as west Texas and the Dead Sea shores (Nof et al, 2013;Atzori et al, 2015;Baer et al, 2018;Kim and Lu, 2018), in urban settings like Heerlen in Netherlands, Gauteng province in South Africa and Quebec City in Canada (Chang and Hanssen, 2014;Theron et al, 2017;Martel et al, 2018) and in vegetated regions like Bayou Corne, Louisiana and Tampa, Florida (Jones and Blom, 2013;Oliver-Cabrera et al, 2019). The above InSAR implementation examples were conducted in areas where interferometric coherence is maintained over long periods of time, through stable radar scattering from bare surfaces, rocks, and man-made structures.…”