Geology topics

Z. Lu

Publications and source records attributed to Z. Lu.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2020

Twelve-year dynamics and rainfall thresholds for alternating creep and rapid movement of the Hooskanaden landslide from integrating InSAR, pixel offset tracking, and borehole and hydrological measurements

The Hooskanaden landslide is a large (~600 m wide × 1,300 m long), deep (~30 – 45 m) slide located in southwestern Oregon. Since 1958, it has had five moderate/major movements that catastrophically damaged the intersecting U.S. Highway 101, along with persistent slow wet‐season movements and a long‐term accelerating trend due to coastal erosion. Multiple remote sensing approaches, borehole measurements, and hydrological observations have been integrated to interpret the motion behaviors of the slide. Pixel offset tracking of both Sentinel‐1 and Sentinel‐2 images was carried out to reconstruct the 3‐D displacement field of the 2019 major event, and the results agree well with field measurements. A 12‐year displacement history of the landslide from 2007 to 2019 has been retrieved by incorporating offsets from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) digital elevation model (DEM) gradients and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) processing of ALOS and Sentinel‐1 images. Comparisons with daily/hourly ground precipitation reveal that the motion dynamics are predominantly controlled by intensity and temporal pattern of rainfall. A new empirical threefold rainfall threshold was therefore proposed to forecast the dates for the moderate/major movements. This threshold relies upon antecedent water‐year and previous 3‐day and daily precipitation and was able to represent observed movement periods well. Adaptation of our threshold methodology could prove useful for other large, deep landslides for which temporal forecasting has long been generally intractable. The averaged characteristic hydraulic conductivity and diffusivity were estimated as 6.6 × 10 −6 m/s and 6.6 × 10 −4 m 2 /s, respectively, based on the time lags between rainfall pulses and slide accelerations. Hydrologic modeling using these parameters helps to explain the ability of the new rainfall threshold.

Oregon↗

USGS2017

High altitude flights by ruddy shelduck Tadorna ferruginea during trans-Himalayan migrations

Birds that migrate across high altitude mountain ranges are faced with the challenge of maintaining vigorous exercise in environments with limited oxygen. Ruddy shelducks are known to use wintering grounds south of the Tibetan Plateau at sea level and breeding grounds north of Himalayan mountain range. Therefore, it is likely these shelducks are preforming high altitude migrations. In this study we analyse satellite telemetry data collected from 15 ruddy shelduck from two populations wintering south of the Tibetan Plateau from 2007 to 2011. During north and south migrations ruddy shelduck travelled 1481 km (range 548–2671 km) and 1238 km (range 548–2689 km) respectively. We find mean maximum altitudes of birds in flight reached 5590 m (range of means 4755–6800 m) and mean maximum climb rates of 0.45 m s –1 (range 0.23–0.74 m s –1 ). The ruddy shelduck is therefore an extreme high altitude migrant that has likely evolved a range of physiological adaptations in order to complete their migrations.

Journal of Avian Biology↗

USGS2014

Surface deformation associated with the March 1996 earthquake swarm at Akutan Island, Alaska, revealed by C-band ERS and L-band JERS radar interferometry

In March 1996, an intense earthquake swarm beneath Akutan Island, Alaska, was accompanied by extensive ground cracking but no eruption of Akutan volcano. Radar interferograms produced from L-band JERS-1 and C-band ERS-1/2 images show uplift associated with the swarm by as much as 60 cm on the western part of the island. The JERS-1 interferogram has greater coherence, especially in areas with loose surface material or thick vegetation. It also shows subsidence of similar magnitude on the eastern part of the island and displacements along faults reactivated during the swarm. The axis of uplift and subsidence strikes about N70°W, which is roughly parallel to a zone of fresh cracks on the northwest flank of the volcano, to normal faults that cut the island and to the inferred maximum compressive stress direction. A common feature of models that fit the deformation is the emplacement of a shallow dike along this trend beneath the northwest flank of the volcano. Both before and after the swarm, the northwest flank was uplifted 5–20 mm/year relative to the southwest flank, probably by magma intrusion. The zone of fresh cracks subsided about 20 mm during 1996–1997 and at lesser rates thereafter, possibly because of cooling and degassing of the intrusion.

Alaska↗

USGS2013

Multiple baseline radar interferometry applied to coastal land cover classification and change analyses

ERS-1 and ERS-2 SAR data were collected in tandem over a four-month period and used to generate interferometric coherence, phase, and intensity products that we compared to a classified land cover coastal map of Big Bend, Florida. Forests displayed the highest intensity, and marshes the lowest. The intensity for fresh marsh and forests progressively shifted while saline marsh intensity variance distribution changed with the season. Intensity variability suggested instability between temporal comparisons. Forests, especially hardwoods, displayed lower coherences and marshes higher. Only marshes retained coherence after 70 days. Coherence was more responsive to land cover class than intensity and provided discrimination in winter. Phase distributions helped reveal variation in vegetation structure, identify broad land cover classes and unique within-class variations, and estimate water-level changes. Copyright ?? 2006 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

GIScience and Remote Sensing↗

USGS2012

Monitoring on Xi'an ground fissures deformation with TerraSAR-X data

Owing to the fine resolution of TerraSAR-X data provided since 2007, this paper applied 6 TerraSAR data (strip mode) during 3rd Dec. 2009 to 23rd Mar. 2010 to detect and monitor the active fissures over Xi'an region. Three themes have been designed for high precision detection and monitoring of Xi'an-Chang'an fissures, as small baseline subsets (SBAS) to test the atmospheric effects of differential interferograms pair stepwise, 2-pass differential interferogram with very short baseline perpendicular to generate the whole deformation map with 44 days interval, and finally, corner reflector (CR) technique was used to closely monitor the relative deformation time series between two CRs settled crossing two ground fissures. Results showed that TerraSAR data are a good choice for small-scale ground fissures detection and monitoring, while special considerations should be taken for their great temporal and baseline decorrelation. Secondly, ground fissures in Xi'an were mostly detected at the joint section of stable and deformable regions. Lastly, CR-InSAR had potential ability to monitor relative deformation crossing fissures with millimeter precision.

Wuhan Daxue Xuebao (Xinxi Kexue Ban)/Geomatics and↗

USGS2011

Ground settlement monitoring based on temporarily coherent points between two SAR acquisitions

An InSAR analysis approach for identifying and extracting the temporarily coherent points (TCP) that exist between two SAR acquisitions and for determining motions of the TCP is presented for applications such as ground settlement monitoring. TCP are identified based on the spatial characteristics of the range and azimuth offsets of coherent radar scatterers. A method for coregistering TCP based on the offsets of TCP is given to reduce the coregistration errors at TCP. An improved phase unwrapping method based on the minimum cost flow (MCF) algorithm and local Delaunay triangulation is also proposed for sparse TCP data. The proposed algorithms are validated using a test site in Hong Kong. The test results show that the algorithms work satisfactorily for various ground features.

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing↗

USGS2011

Methods of InSAR atmosphere correction for volcano activity monitoring

When a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) signal propagates through the atmosphere on its path to and from the sensor, it is inevitably affected by atmospheric effects. In particular, the applicability and accuracy of Interferometric SAR (InSAR) techniques for volcano monitoring is limited by atmospheric path delays. Therefore, atmospheric correction of interferograms is required to improve the performance of InSAR for detecting volcanic activity, especially in order to advance its ability to detect subtle pre-eruptive changes in deformation dynamics. In this paper, we focus on InSAR tropospheric mitigation methods and their performance in volcano deformation monitoring. Our study areas include Okmok volcano and Unimak Island located in the eastern Aleutians, AK. We explore two methods to mitigate atmospheric artifacts, namely the numerical weather model simulation and the atmospheric filtering using Persistent Scatterer processing. We investigate the capability of the proposed methods, and investigate their limitations and advantages when applied to determine volcanic processes. ?? 2011 IEEE.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2011

Mapping three-dimensional surface deformation by combining multiple-aperture interferometry and conventional interferometry: Application to the June 2007 eruption of Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii

Surface deformation caused by an intrusion and small eruption during June 17-19, 2007, along the East Rift Zone of Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii, was three-dimensionally reconstructed from radar interferograms acquired by the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) phased-array type L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) (PALSAR) instrument. To retrieve the 3-D surface deformation, a method that combines multiple-aperture interferometry (MAI) and conventional interferometric SAR (InSAR) techniques was applied to one ascending and one descending ALOS PALSAR interferometric pair. The maximum displacements as a result of the intrusion and eruption are about 0.8, 2, and 0.7 m in the east, north, and up components, respectively. The radar-measured 3-D surface deformation agrees with GPS data from 24 sites on the volcano, and the root-mean-square errors in the east, north, and up components of the displacement are 1.6, 3.6, and 2.1 cm, respectively. Since a horizontal deformation of more than 1 m was dominantly in the north-northwest-south-southeast direction, a significant improvement of the north-south component measurement was achieved by the inclusion of MAI measurements that can reach a standard deviation of 3.6 cm. A 3-D deformation reconstruction through the combination of conventional InSAR and MAI will allow for better modeling, and hence, a more comprehensive understanding, of the source geometry associated with volcanic, seismic, and other processes that are manifested by surface deformation.

Hawai'i↗

USGS2011

Modeling PSInSAR time series without phase unwrapping

In this paper, we propose a least-squares-based method for multitemporal synthetic aperture radar interferometry that allows one to estimate deformations without the need of phase unwrapping. The method utilizes a series of multimaster wrapped differential interferograms with short baselines and focuses on arcs at which there are no phase ambiguities. An outlier detector is used to identify and remove the arcs with phase ambiguities, and a pseudoinverse of the variance-covariance matrix is used as the weight matrix of the correlated observations. The deformation rates at coherent points are estimated with a least squares model constrained by reference points. The proposed approach is verified with a set of simulated data.

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing↗

USGS2011

Three-dimensional surface deformation mapping by convensional interferometry and multiple aperture interferometry

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technique has been successfully used for mapping surface deformations [1-2], but it has been normally limited to a measurement along the radar line-of-sight (LOS) direction. For this reason, it is impossible to determine the north (N-S) component of surface deformation because of using data from near-polar orbiting satellites, and it is not sufficient to resolve the parameters of models for earthquakes and volcanic activities because there is a marked trade-off among model parameters [3]. ?? 2011 KIEES.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2010

Study of high SAR backscattering caused by an increase of soil moisture over a sparsely vegetated area: Implications for characteristics of backscattering

We used interferometric methods on a pair of repeat-pass ERS-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images to study soil moisture changes over sparsely vegetated targets. The intensity of the SAR image acquired at one time was higher than that of an image acquired at an earlier time. We used a correlation image computed from the SAR image pair to study the cause of the observed changes in SAR intensity. Because a reduction of correlation over areas with intensity changes was not observed, we interpreted the intensity changes as not being caused by changes in roughness/structure, but by a change in soil moisture owing to rainfall. An increase in soil moisture ranging from 5% to 20% is the most likely explanation for the increase of intensity. These analyses imply that both intensity and phase information should be used in SAR change detection applications.

International Journal of Remote Sensing↗

USGS2009

A new numerical method for calculating extrema of received power for polarimetric SAR

A numerical method called cross-step iteration is proposed to calculate the maximal/minimal received power for polarized imagery based on a target's Kennaugh matrix. This method is much more efficient than the systematic method, which searches for the extrema of received power by varying the polarization ellipse angles of receiving and transmitting polarizations. It is also more advantageous than the Schuler method, which has been adopted by the PolSARPro package, because the cross-step iteration method requires less computation time and can derive both the maximal and minimal received powers, whereas the Schuler method is designed to work out only the maximal received power. The analytical model of received-power optimization indicates that the first eigenvalue of the Kennaugh matrix is the supremum of the maximal received power. The difference between these two parameters reflects the depolarization effect of the target's backscattering, which might be useful for target discrimination. ?? 2009 IEEE.

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters↗

USGS2009

Multi-temporal RADARSAT-1 and ERS backscattering signatures of coastal wetlands in southeastern Louisiana

Using multi-temporal European Remote-sensing Satellites (ERS-1/-2) and Canadian Radar Satellite (RADARSAT-1) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data over the Louisiana coastal zone, we characterize seasonal variations of radar backscat-tering according to vegetation type. Our main findings are as follows. First, ERS-1/-2 and RADARSAT-1 require careful radiometric calibration to perform multi-temporal backscattering analysis for wetland mapping. We use SAR backscattering signals from cities for the relative calibration. Second, using seasonally averaged backscattering coefficients from ERS-1/-2 and RADARSAT-1, we can differentiate most forests (bottomland and swamp forests) and marshes (freshwater, intermediate, brackish, and saline marshes) in coastal wetlands. The student t-test results support the usefulness of season-averaged backscatter data for classification. Third, combining SAR backscattering coefficients and an optical-sensor-based normalized difference vegetation index can provide further insight into vegetation type and enhance the separation between forests and marshes. Our study demonstrates that SAR can provide necessary information to characterize coastal wetlands and monitor their changes.

Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing↗

USGS2008

Six years of land subsidence in shanghai revealed by JERS-1 SAR data

Differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) (DInSAR) has proven to be very useful in mapping and monitoring land subsidence in many regions of the world. Shanghai, China's largest city, is one of such areas suffering from land subsidence as a result of severe withdrawal of groundwater for different usages. DInSAR application in Shanghai with the C-band European Remote Sensing 1 & 2 (ERS-1/2) SAR data has been difficult mainly due to the problem of decorrelation of InSAR pairs with temporal baselines larger than 10 months. To overcome the coherence loss of C-band InSAR data, we used eight L-band Japanese Earth Resource Satellite (JERS-1) SAR data acquired during 2 October 1992 to 15 July 1998 to study land subsidence phenomenon in Shanghai. Three of the images were used to produce two separate digital elevation models (DEMs) of the study area to remove topographic fringes from the interferograms used for subsidence mapping. Six interferograms were used to generate 2 different time series of deformation maps over Shanghai. The cumulative subsidence map generated from each of the time series is in agreement with the land subsidence measurements of Shanghai city from 1990-1998, produced from other survey methods. ?? 2007 IEEE.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2008

Radarsat-1 and ERS InSAR analysis over southeastern coastal Louisiana: Implications for mapping water-level changes beneath swamp forests

Detailed analysis of C-band European Remote Sensing 1 and 2 (ERS-1/ERS-2) and Radarsat-1 interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) imagery was conducted to study water-level changes of coastal wetlands of southeastern Louisiana. Radar backscattering and InSAR coherence suggest that the dominant radar backscattering mechanism for swamp forest and saline marsh is double-bounce backscattering, implying that InSAR images can be used to estimate water-level changes with unprecedented spatial details. On the one hand, InSAR images suggest that water-level changes over the study site can be dynamic and spatially heterogeneous and cannot be represented by readings from sparsely distributed gauge stations. On the other hand, InSAR phase measurements are disconnected by structures and other barriers and require absolute water-level measurements from gauge stations or other sources to convert InSAR phase values to absolute water-level changes. ?? 2006 IEEE.

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing↗

USGS2008

Diverse deformation patterns of Aleutian volcanoes from InSAR

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is capable of measuring ground-surface deformation with centimeter-to-subcentimeter precision at a spatial resolution of tens of meters over an area of hundreds to thousands of square kilometers. With its global coverage and all-weather imaging capability, InSAR has become an increasingly important measurement technique for constraining magma dynamics of volcanoes over remote regions such as the Aleutian Islands. The spatial pattern of surface deformation data derived from InSAR images enables the construction of detailed mechanical models to enhance the study of magmatic processes. This paper summarizes the diverse deformation patterns of the Aleutian volcanoes observed with InSAR and demonstrates that deformation patterns and associated magma supply mechanisms in the Aleutians are diverse and vary between volcanoes. These findings provide a basis for improved models and better understanding of magmatic plumbing systems.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2007

SAR measurements of surface displacements at Augustine Volcano, Alaska from 1992 to 2005

Augustine volcano is an active stratovolcano located at the southwest of Anchorage, Alaska. Augustine volcano had experienced seven significantly explosive eruptions in 1812, 1883, 1908, 1935, 1963, 1976, and 1986, and a minor eruption in January 2006. We measured the surface displacements of the volcano by radar interferometry and GPS before and after the eruption in 2006. ERS-1/2, RADARSAT-1 and ENVISAT SAR data were used for the study. Multiple interferograms were stacked to reduce artifacts caused by different atmospheric conditions. Least square (LS) method was used to reduce atmospheric artifacts. Singular value decomposition (SVD) method was applied for retrieval of time sequential deformations. Satellite radar interferometry helps to understand the surface displacements system of Augustine volcano.

Alaska↗

USGS2006

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR)

Geodesists are, for the most part, a patient and hardworking lot. A day spent hiking to a distant peak, hours spent waiting for clouds to clear a line-of-sight between observation points, weeks spent moving methodically along a level line — such is the normal pulse of the geodetic profession. The fruits of such labors are all the more precious because they are so scarce. A good day spent with an electronic distance meter (EDM) or level typically produces fewer than a dozen data points. A year of tiltmeter output sampled at ten-minute intervals constitutes less than half a megabyte of data. All of the leveling data ever collected at Yellowstone Caldera fit comfortably on a single PC diskette! These quantities are trivial by modern datastorage standards, in spite of the considerable efforts expended to produce them.

Book chapter↗