Country-scale assessment of urban areas, population, and households exposed to land subsidence using Sentinel-1 InSAR, and GPS time series

Enrique Antonio Fernández-Torres (), Enrique Cabral-Cano, Darío Solano-Rojas, Luis Salazar-Tlaczani, Josue Gárcia-Venegas, Bertha Marquez-Azúa, Shannon Graham and Katia Michelle Villarnobo-Gonzalez
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Enrique Antonio Fernández-Torres: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Enrique Cabral-Cano: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Darío Solano-Rojas: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Luis Salazar-Tlaczani: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Josue Gárcia-Venegas: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Bertha Marquez-Azúa: Universidad de Guadalajara, Ladrón de Guevara
Shannon Graham: The College of New Jersey Physics Department
Katia Michelle Villarnobo-Gonzalez: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2024, vol. 120, issue 2, No 24, 1577-1601

Abstract: Abstract The increased need for water resources in urban sprawls and intense droughts has forced more aggressive groundwater extraction resulting in numerous urban areas undergoing land subsidence. In most cases, only some large metropolitan areas have been well-characterized for subsidence. However, there is no existing country-wide assessment of urban areas, population, and households exposed to this process. This research showcases a methodology to systematically evaluate urban localities with land subsidence higher than − 2.8 cm/year throughout Mexico. We used Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) tools with a dataset of 4611 scenes from European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 A/B SAR sensors acquired from descending orbits from September 2018 through October 2019. This dataset was processed at a supercomputer using InSAR Scientific Computing Environment and the Miami InSAR Time Series software in Python software. The quality and calibration of the resulting velocity maps are assessed through a large-scale comparison with observations from 100 continuous GPS sites throughout Mexico. Our results show that an urban area of 3797 km2, 6.9 million households, and 17% of the total population in Mexico is exposed to subsidence velocities of faster than − 2.8 cm/year, in more than 853 urban localities within 29 land subsidence regions. We also confirm previous global potential estimations of subsidence occurrence in low relief areas over unconsolidated deposits and where groundwater aquifers are under stress. The presented research demonstrates the capabilities for surveying urban areas exposed to land subsidence at a country-scale level by combining Sentinel-1 velocities with spatial national census data.

Keywords: InSAR; Sentinel-1; Urban land subsidence; GPS; Mexico; Nation-wide (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s11069-023-06259-5

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