A study of Ground Deformation over the Kiruna region using the StaMPS Technique

Abstract:

In recent years, ground deformations were observed in and around Kiruna city region [67º49'48"N, 20º25'48"E] caused due to the mining of iron ore near the city. The main focus of this thesis is to study the performance of Stanford Method of Persistent Scatter (StaMPS) processing developed by A.Hooper, to determine the ground deformation around this region and its ability to measure wide range of deformation rates in different seasons and terrains at such high latitudes.

The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from Envisat satellite collected over the study area, during the time period of 2002-2010 is used for the application of StaMPS technique. The ground deformation rate in mm/yr along line of sight direction of satellite is obtained. The consistency of estimated values and the estimates obtained by using Coherent Target Monitoring technique (CTM) on data from Radarsat-2 satellite is then verified. A comparative analysis is done by decomposing line of sight deformation rate into vertical deformation rate and deriving the linear relationship between both of them.

The results show that the StaMPS technique is able to identify deformation around 0-3 mm/yr in the central city area and greater than 5 mm/yr in the region close to the mine. The performance of the technique is better using summer data rather than the winter, when ground is covered with snow. The vertical deformation estimates from using CTM technique and Radarsat-2 data and of Envisat data using StaMPS technique are in the same range, i.e, [0 8] mm/year in overall study area but are highly consistent in only some of the regions.