Deformation mapping in three dimensions for underground mining using InSAR – Southern highland coalfield in New South Wales, Australia

This article presents 3D surface deformation mapping results derived from satellite synthetic aperture radar SAR data acquired over underground coal mines. Both ENVISAT Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar ASAR and Advanced Land Observing Satellite ALOS Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar PALSAR data were used in this study. The quality of the 3D deformation mapping results due to underground mining is mainly limited by two factors. 1 Differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar DInSAR is less sensitive to displacement along the north–south direction in the case of the current SAR satellite configurations. 2 The mining-induced displacement is continuous and nonlinear; and the accuracy of the 3D DInSAR measurement is severely affected by the similar but non-identical temporal overlaps of the InSAR pairs. The simulation and real data analyzes have shown that it would be more practical to use DInSAR pairs with the assumption of negligible northing displacement to derive the displacements in the easting and vertical directions. The northing displacement could then be estimated from the residuals. This limitation could be overcome in the future with the launch of more radar satellites, which would provide better viewing geometry.