Analysis of ground subsidence at a coal-mining area in Huainan using time-series InSAR

In Huainan City, Anhui Province, China, ground subsidence persistently occurs due to underground coal mining, which has caused several environmental issues. A modified time-series Interfermetric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technique is applied to obtain ground movement in Huainan over a period of approximately two years using 20 ascending Radarsat-2 images. In particular, distributed scatterers (DSs) are efficiently identified using classification information and statistical characteristics. Classified information is used to identify the specific DS classes and statistical characteristics are used to refine the DS candidates. To control error propagation and improve computational efficiency, the deformation rate and digital elevation model (DEM) error of persistent scatterers (PSs) are first retrieved using conventional persistent scatterer intermemetry (PSI). Then, a region-growing-based strategy is applied to extract the deformation rate of DSs. Land subsidence is detected in coal-mining areas of central Dingji, Guqiao, Zhangjiaji, Xinji I, and Xinji II, which suggests that the subsidence is primarily caused by underground mining. The fastest subsidence occurring in non-urban areas is particularly vulnerable to subsidence and collapsed lakes. It is also found that the collapsed lakes have expanded during the observation period, with an expanded mining area of 0.842 km² near Guqiao. A linear relationship between the observed subsidence and expansion of collapsed lakes was found, which indicates that the expansion of collapsed lakes hass resulted from subsidence due to underground coal mining.