Project S3

Catchment wide remote sensing of sediment source dynamics

Complementary Chinese topic: Tectonics and strain using BeiDou Network

Research objectives

The catchment-wide base map and surface change model derived from lower resolution multi-sensor and multi-temporal remote sensing imagery targets a dynamic landform process oriented characterization of the Earth surface in the entire Nam Co catchment. Using archived C-band radar data of ERS-1/-2 and Envisat as well as optical imagery we will provide a SAR-based time series of land surface dynamics from 1992 to the present supported by optical imagery. The recently launched Sentinel satellites (1A, 1B, 2A) provide the opportunity to update this time series on a regular basis. The dynamic characterization includes seasonal variations of glacier, snow and vegetation cover, as well as soil moisture and sediment source dynamics representing important input to hydrological, C and erosion modeling within TransTiP. The coarser spatial resolution of C-band (20m) gives us also the possibility to derive a complete catchment wide Earth surface movement field and provides insight into contemporaneous tectonic movements (Qiao et al., 2011). Sentinel data with its repetition rate of 6 days allows to better understand the variability of surface processes for this large area.

Sino-German complementarity of research

In cooperation with our ITP partners we will conduct field work to estimate glacier and landslide movement rates with terrestrial and BeiDou methods. Derivation of the tectonical movement field and its strain using the Chinese BeiDou and the data of the International International GNSS Service (IGS) Network. IGP has long experience on the estimation of recent crustal movements with GNSS data (Perlt et al., 2008). The pointwise results will be used with InSAR results for wide area modeling of recent crustal movements.

Supervisors:

Prof. Dr. Markus Gerke, TU Braunschweig
PD Dr. Jussi Baade, FSU Jena