Investigation of groundwater induced land subsidence in Ludhiana City using InSAR and Sentinel-1 data

Land Subsidence (LS) is a vertically downward motion of land surface due to various reasons such as natural processes and anthropogenic activities especially excessive exploitation of groundwater. LS has adverse effects on substantial infrastructural damage, severe environmental problems, extensive economic losses, and significant societal impacts. In this study, we investigated the LS of Ludhiana city, a densely populated, largest and major industrial city of Punjab state, India. We presented a comprehensive methodology of Short BAseline Subset Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SBASInSAR) for LS measurement using an open-source computational environment. We generated 197 interferograms from 65 Sentinel-1A images acquired in descending pass between September 2019–July 2022 for deriving radar line of sight (LOS) displacement time-series and mean LOS velocity. Deformation results showed that the southern, and south-eastern parts of the city had been consistently moving downward with a mean subsidence rate of 24.7 mm/yr, while in western, few small patches in eastern and northern regions it ranges from 2 to 21 mm/yr, 3–20 mm/yr and 4–16 mm/yr respectively. The standard deviation of mean LOS velocity was observed between 0.7 and 3.3 mm/yr with majority values < 2 mm/yr. SBASInSAR results were compared with six Groundwater Level (GWL) wells observations, and both measurements generally agreed well at GWL locations (W1–W6) except W1–W2. For assessing the influence of groundwater change on LS, a correlation analysis was performed, and correlation of 0.50, 0.47, 0.81, 0.77, 0.84, and 0.64 was observed at GWL stations (W1–W6) respectively. Overall comparison of InSAR and GWL measurements are found in good agreement and significantly correlated, which can provide sufficiently detailed information about LS.