Application of PSInSAR Monitoring for Large-Scale Landslide with Persistent Scatterers from Deep Learning Classification

The Persistent Scatterers InSAR (PSInSAR) technology, which utilizes pixels with stable phases to extract ground deformation, is an effective tool for large-scale, long-period surface monitoring applications. It has been widely applied to land subsidence monitoring, earthquake research, and infrastructure risk management. Furthermore, some studies have successfully employed this method to monitor the progressive motion of creeping in landslide areas. However, these regions containing active landslides are usually covered by canopy layers, which cause low coherence in InSAR processing and reduce the number of stable pixels, thereby preventing long-term period monitoring in those areas. In this study, the supervised deep learning model, U-Net, based on a convolutional neural network, is applied to the differential InSAR dataset acquired from Sentinel-1 to improve persistent scatterer selection. A well-processed PSInSAR result, utilizing 55 Sentinel-1 images acquired from 5 November 2014 to 19 December 2017, is introduced as a dataset for model training. The pixel-based Persistent Scatterer (PS) labels used for model training are identified using the StaMPS software. The model is designed to identify the distributed scatterer (iDS) index using a single pair of SAR images. As a result, more iDS pixels can be obtained from a single interferogram, indicating a significant improvement over the StaMPS algorithm. The line-of-sight velocity and time series of PS pixels from the model prediction show a long-term uplift on the upper slope, which represents downslope sliding in the target area. Furthermore, some iDS pixels exhibit a seasonal deformation on the lower part of the slope. The capability for these additional deformation analyses underscores the potential of this new deep-learning-based approach.