Integrated Sar Technologies for Monitoring the Stability of Mine Sites: Application Using Terrasar-X and Radarsat-2 Images

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The last three decades have seen significant mining development in the northern regions of Canada, where the freeze and thaw cycle of permafrost and corresponding surface subsidence and heave represent a significant challenge at all mining stages, from the design of infrastructures to the monitoring of restored areas. Over the past ten years, SAR interferometry has been widely used to monitor ground surface deformation. With this technique, changes in phase between two SAR acquisitions are used to detect centimetre to millimetre surface displacements over a large area with high spatial resolution. This paper presents the results of a project that aims to develop a SAR solution to provide useful information for environmental monitoring and assessing the stability of mining sites. RADARSAT-2 and TerraSAR-X images acquired during the summer of 2014 were used to measure the displacements of ground surface, infrastructures and stockpiles caused by seasonal changes in permafrost extent. The study area is an open-pit mine located in Nunavut, northern Canada, in the continuous permafrost zone. Results shown that surface displacements calculated from RADARSAT-2 and TerraSAR-X are very similar and in agreement with scientific and terrain knowledge. Significant displacements were observed in loose soil areas while none was detected in bedrock and rock outcrop areas. The areas most affected by active layer changes showed surface subsidence during the thaw settlement period. Thus, InSAR can be used as a tool to guide the siting and design of new infrastructure as well as highlighting risks in areas of unstable terrain.

A SIFT-Based DEM Extraction Approach Using GEOEYE-1 Satellite Stereo Pairs

“…Experiments on generating DEMs from GeoEye-1 were only made available recently [ 10 ]. Notable examples include comparisons with lower (e.g., [ 11 ] for various locations in Catalonia, Spain) and similar resolution satellite imagery (e.g., [ 12 , 13 ] for the coast of Almería, Spain and [ 14 ] for the city of Trento, Italy), as well as specialized environmental applications such as the production of 1:5000 topographic maps for Nanisivik, Nunavut, Canada [ 15 ], floodplain mapping of a seasonal stream in Crete, Greece [ 16 ], gully erosion assessment in Sehoul, Morocco [ 17 ], and enhancing the security of high-value facilities via earth observation data analysis at the Jülich Research Centre, Germany [ 18 ].…”

Implementation of Synthetic Aperture Radar and Geoinformation Technologies in the Complex Monitoring and Managing of the Mining Industry Objects

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