A thorough accuracy assessment of MT-InSAR for soil erosion monitoring in the hilly and gully Loess Plateau

IF 5.9 1区地球科学 Q1 ENGINEERING, CIVIL

Journal of Hydrology Pub Date : 2025-02-23 DOI:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2025.132939

Yafei Zhang , Pengfei Li , Liuru Hu , Jinfei Hu , Yun Shi , Yufen Niu , Xuejian Zhu , Dou Li

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

A reliable monitoring of erosion over large areas is crucial for the control of soil erosion. Spaceborne remote sensing techniques (e.g. Interferometric synthetic aerture radar, InSAR), provide a promising tool for the large-scale erosion monitoring, while their accuracy was rarely quantitatively assessed. In the study, the accuracy of InSAR for erosion mointoring was quantitatively assessed in a small catchment of the hilly and gully Loess Plateau. Twenty-one Sentinel-1 SAR images during July 2021-June 2022 were acquired and analyzed using the Multi-Temporal InSAR (MT-InSAR) technique, while topographic features derived from high-resolution DEMs, generated based on point clouds acquired by umanned aeria vehicle laser scanning (ULS), was employed to achieve land surface deformation related to erosion and deposition. The erosion / deposition results obtained were then verified with erosion pin measurements, differencing results of ULS-derived DEMs (DoD), and precipitation records. Results showed that average erosion rate of the study area detect by InSAR (9882 t km⁻² a^-1) was similar to that derived by ULS DoD (9747 t km⁻² a^-1). The spatial pattern of erosion / deposition derived by MT-InSAR exhibited a generally good agreement with that of DoD results, while, unlike ULS-derived DoDs, InSAR failed to detect changes of narrow gullies. The derived erosion and deposition were significantly correlated with erosion pin measurements (R² = 0.85, p < 0.01, ρ = 0.92), with an RMSE of 6.51 mm, when two sites with decorrelation phenomena were not considered. The geomorphic change of gully heads / gully slopes detected by MT-InSAR showed a significantly positive correlation with precipitation (ρ > 0.85, p < 0.05). Overall, we concluded that MT-InSAR can be used for long-term erosion monitoring over a large area, while an integration of multi-source data (e.g. optical images) was still desirable to overcome the drawbacks of InSAR technology such as those induced by the decorrelation phenomena on areas with large and / or rapid changes.

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来源期刊

Journal of Hydrology 地学-地球科学综合

CiteScore

11.00

自引率

12.50%

发文量

1309

审稿时长

7.5 months

期刊介绍： The Journal of Hydrology publishes original research papers and comprehensive reviews in all the subfields of the hydrological sciences including water based management and policy issues that impact on economics and society. These comprise, but are not limited to the physical, chemical, biogeochemical, stochastic and systems aspects of surface and groundwater hydrology, hydrometeorology and hydrogeology. Relevant topics incorporating the insights and methodologies of disciplines such as climatology, water resource systems, hydraulics, agrohydrology, geomorphology, soil science, instrumentation and remote sensing, civil and environmental engineering are included. Social science perspectives on hydrological problems such as resource and ecological economics, environmental sociology, psychology and behavioural science, management and policy analysis are also invited. Multi-and interdisciplinary analyses of hydrological problems are within scope. The science published in the Journal of Hydrology is relevant to catchment scales rather than exclusively to a local scale or site.