Erosion/Deposition mapping/estimation based on inSAR

This may sound like a naive question, but would it theoretically make sense to try to use (in)SAR technology to map and/or quantify soil erosion/deposition? Looks like there has been some work that supports this, although it’s acknowledge that it is a complex task: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/1999WR900335/full

Maybe, overall changes are too small to be captured, or would there be any other physical reason why this just wouldn’t work? I’m guessing that if you’re lucky, delineating areas of erosion/deposition could make sense, but quantify the amounts is over the top, since you’d need a before and after ridiculously accurate DEM, right?

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Erosion/deposition will cause a loss of coherence, but so do many other things. Sounds tricky.

edit: and for DEM-differencing to work you would need rather major elevation-changes to be able to reliably detect them with repeat-pass InSAR

I agree, thanks for your reply, inSAR is for now not the right technology for this I assume.

The technology is a right one…it’s just that the current sensors do not do that well enough. Very-high resolution single-pass InSAR should be able to do the job…

Hi, friends. I have the same idea with you about using (D-in)SAR technology to map and/or quantify soil erosion/deposition. Have you got any advances in this field so far? Thanks. Looking forward to hear from you.:slight_smile:

The paper you cited above was published in 2000, now seventeen years have passed. I also wonder why (D-in)SAR technology have little advance in quantifing soil erosion/deposition ? :grinning:

The technique that would work is DEM-differencing using high-resolution single-pass InSAR data (TanDEM-X type).

Can you quantify “rather major” to any degree?
(I’m not an inSAR expert)

I would guess some low tens of meters of DEM-change should be detectable. Depends what is the vertical accuracy of S-1 DEM generation from a single pair, I don’t remember seeing any numbers…