Lambiel, C. and Delaloye, R. and Strozzi, T. and Lugon, R. and Raetzo, H. (2008)
ERS InSAR for assessing rock glacier activity
Inproceedings
- Cite key
- Lambiel2008b
- Language
- en
- Journal
- Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Permafrost, Fairbanks, Alaska
- Pages
- 1019-1025
- URL
- http://my.unil.ch/serval/document/BIB_5A9BB99B2E45.pdf
- Description
- The potential of space-borne synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) to estimate both agnitude and spatialpattern of slope motion in a periglacial environment has been evaluated over a large area of the western Swiss Alps,using data from the ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites. About 280 active rock glaciers with different classes of velocitieshave been identified on the analysed interferograms. The velocities range from a few centimetres per year to severalmeters per year. This data was validated by some differential GPS measurements and compared to numerous fieldobservations. The resulting classification permits a better description of the full range of rock glaciers velocities anddynamics. Therefore, ERS InSAR reveals to be an efficient remote sensing technique, not only for inventorying activerock glaciers over a wide area, but also to estimate and categorize their displacement velocities.