ABSTRACT
Natural hazards in protected lands frequently result in damage to or loss of lives, livelihoods, structures, or ecosystem productivity. Often, natural hazards occur in remote areas of protected lands or impact on such large areas that in situ measurements are not feasible, accurate, or timely enough for monitoring or early warning. Satellite interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) provides an all-weather imaging capability for measuring ground-surface deformation with centimeter-to-subcentimeter precision and inferring changes in landscape characteristics over a large region. With its global coverage and all-weather imaging capability, InSAR is an important remote sensing technique for measuring ground-surface deformation of various natural hazards and the associated landscape changes. The spatial distribution of surface deformation data, derived from InSAR imagery, enables the construction of detailed numerical models to enhance the study of physical processes of natural hazards. This chapter (a) introduces the basics of InSAR for deformation mapping and landscape change detection, (b) discusses state-of-the-art technical issues in InSAR processing and interpretation, and (c) showcases the application of InSAR to the study of volcano, earthquake, landslide, and glacier movement and the mapping of high-resolution digital elevation model and ‰re progression with InSAR imagery over protected lands.
