INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF PHOTOGRAMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING VOL. XXXII PART 7 PP. 555-558. APPLICABILITY OF ERS-1 AND ERS-2 INSAR FOR LAND SUBSIDENCE MONITORING IN THE SILESIAN COAL MINING REGION, POLAND

In the study area in southern Poland some 130 Mio. tonnes of coal is extracted from 65 underground mines each year. As a consequence almost 6,000 sq. km of the Upper Silesian Coal basin is subjected to man inducted surface damages. The most dangerous factor is the land subsidence, causing damages to buildings and other constructions in a heavily populated area. The InSAR technique can be useful for monitoring the spatial distribution of mining subsidence and determine quantitative measuring for fixed time intervals. As an initial experiment, eight SAR images have been selected and five interferograms for 1 and 2 months periods in 1992 and in 1995 have been processed. For the topographic effects removal a DEM from the ERS-1 and ERS-2 tandem mission have been produced. Preliminary results are presented. On the interferograms from the 35-day periods in 1992 and 1993 subsidence effects have been identified, and a detailed interpretation and the comparison with ground data have been done. Initial interferometric tests show that InSAR technique can reveal spatial distribution of surface elevation changes due to mining activity.