Detection of Rapid Erosion in SE Spain

Liu, Jian-Guo; Mason, Philippa; Hilton, Fiona; Lee, Hoonyol

Detection of Rapid Erosion in SE Spain

2004

Liu, Jian-Guo | Mason, Philippa | Hilton, Fiona | Lee, Hoonyol

<p><i>This paper presents an integrated remote sensing—GIS approach for identifying areas vulnerable to rapid erosion in Almería Province, Southeast Spain. Earth Resources Satellite (ERS) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) multi-temporal interferometric coherence imagery has been used to detect rapid erosion that causes random changes in the micro-topography of a land surface. These small scale changes result in reduced coherence of the radar signals between the initial and eroded states. However, the detection solely based on coherence imagery is not exclusive because other factors may cause losing coherence as well. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is then used to derive criteria for a set of environmental conditions favourable to rapid erosion from multi-datasets including Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) imagery and geological maps. The areas predicted to be most vulnerable to rapid erosion across the imagery are then identified where hard evidence of low coherence coincides with favourable conditions.</i></p>

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