Monitoring Small land Subsidence Phenomena in the Al-Ain Region by Satellite SAR Interferometric Stacking

Some areas of the United Arab Emirates suffered from subsidence, cavities and related problems,[0]. Subsidence and, in general, surface land deformations and displacement phenomena, typically involve large regions in the geographical meaning. For such regions, in principle, the terrain displacements should be monitored with an accuracy that is in the orders of magnitude smaller than the spatial resolution: one measurement every several meters should bring an accuracy of few centimetres or even millimetres. Not many technologies can nowadays provide such a combination. One of the few is Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry, and all related developments, that can, generally, be identified as Advanced Interferometric or Interferometric Stacking techniques. This paper presents one case study in Al-Ain region (UAE) by exploiting Interferometric Stacking techniques to monitor land displacements in the order of few millimetres per year.