TY - JOUR
T1 - Reconstructed Aeolian Surface Erosion in Southern Mongolia by Multi-Temporal InSAR Phase Coherence Analyses
AU - Kim, Jungrack
AU - Dorjsuren, Munkhzul
AU - Choi, Yunsoo
AU - Purevjav, Gomboluudev
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2020 Kim, Dorjsuren, Choi and Purevjav.
PY - 2020/11/11
Y1 - 2020/11/11
N2 - The Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia has been identified as the strongest dust storm hot spot threatening public health and socio-economic activities in East Asian countries. Despite its significance, the complete mapping of the aeolian surface erosion in southern Mongolia remains unresolved because of extensive region of interest cannot be interpreted easily by conventional approaches. Therefore, in this study, we built a mapping scheme to define on going aeolian erosion and applied it over the southern Gobi Desert. The remote sensing approach applied here was based on an interferometric synthetic-aperture radar (InSAR) time series technique. A number of Sentinel-1 InSAR pairs that generate phase coherences for a certain period were synthesized via the means of principle component analysis to extract the topographic persistence indicative of surface erosion rates. Validation analyses performed through inter-comparisons of phase coherence signals over landmark areas and residuals between global digital elevation models confirmed the reliability of outputs. The results revealed geological lineaments in southern Mongolia confining sandy deposits and the sediment transportation pathways. Apparently, such bounded eolian deposits and transportation mechanisms within geological structures have significantly contributed to dust generation in the Gobi Desert over southern Mongolia. In addition, this study demonstrated that the newly developed InSAR time series technique has great potential for identifying intensified land erosion and dust sources.
AB - The Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia has been identified as the strongest dust storm hot spot threatening public health and socio-economic activities in East Asian countries. Despite its significance, the complete mapping of the aeolian surface erosion in southern Mongolia remains unresolved because of extensive region of interest cannot be interpreted easily by conventional approaches. Therefore, in this study, we built a mapping scheme to define on going aeolian erosion and applied it over the southern Gobi Desert. The remote sensing approach applied here was based on an interferometric synthetic-aperture radar (InSAR) time series technique. A number of Sentinel-1 InSAR pairs that generate phase coherences for a certain period were synthesized via the means of principle component analysis to extract the topographic persistence indicative of surface erosion rates. Validation analyses performed through inter-comparisons of phase coherence signals over landmark areas and residuals between global digital elevation models confirmed the reliability of outputs. The results revealed geological lineaments in southern Mongolia confining sandy deposits and the sediment transportation pathways. Apparently, such bounded eolian deposits and transportation mechanisms within geological structures have significantly contributed to dust generation in the Gobi Desert over southern Mongolia. In addition, this study demonstrated that the newly developed InSAR time series technique has great potential for identifying intensified land erosion and dust sources.
KW - aeolian erosion
KW - interferometric synthetic-aperture radar
KW - land degradation
KW - phase coherence
KW - time series analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097090158&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/feart.2020.531104
DO - 10.3389/feart.2020.531104
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85097090158
SN - 2296-6463
VL - 8
JO - Frontiers in Earth Science
JF - Frontiers in Earth Science
M1 - 531104
ER -