Detection of sinkhole activity in West-Central Florida using InSAR time series observations

Sinkhole activity in Florida is a major hazard for people and property. Its increasing frequency is often related to an accelerated use of ground-water and land resources in the region. In this work, we use a combined approach of radar interferometry and spatial clustering analysis over three selected sites in West-Central Florida to identify localized deformation that may be caused by sinkhole activity. The region of West-Central Florida is a densely active sinkhole region, where sinkholes tend to be small and land cover is mixed resulting in variable interferometric coherence that complicates Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) surveys. In this work, we present a combined methodology implementing InSAR and a Density-Based Spatial Clustering Analysis (DBSCAN) algorithm to detect unknown sinkhole activity and to alert to possible precursors of sinkhole collapse. The data used for the study consist of acquisitions from three TerraSAR-X frames covering time spans of ~1.7 and 2.5 years with spatial resolutions ranging from 25 cm up to 1 m. We applied the Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) technique using the Stanford Method for Persistent Scatterers (StaMPS) and confirmed the observed deformation signals by also processing the data using the SAR PROcessing tool (SARPROZ). Results show several areas of localized subsidence, from which the cluster with highest rates for each site was selected for detailed inspection. Locations of selected clusters were found in buildings with sizes ranging from 300 m2 to nearly 2000 m2, with subsidence trends ranging from −3 to −6 mm/yr. Results were compared with in-situ observations such as ground penetrating radar (GPR), electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) surveys, visual structural inspection and public county archive documents to help as ground truthing; subsiding locations were found to be related to sinkhole presence or development.