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Monitoring surface subsidence over time - Monitoring Subsidence

From “Monitoring and Modeling Production-Induced Surface Deformation”by Thomas Herring et al. at MIT http://geoweb.mit.edu/~tah . Presentation given by Thomas Herring, at SEG 2006. Reasons for subsidence at Yibal in the Oman

  • Major concern was whether gas (which lies above the oil) extraction was causing compaction well above the depth of the oil producing field.

Results from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture RADAR (InSAR) on ERS2 satellite:

  • These results give snap shots of the deformation between two times. The arid conditions in Oman allow long separations of the images.
  • Measurements are line-of-sight changes and are affected by orbit error, orientation and atmospheric delays. The data quality would be improved by mounting the InSAR on an Unmanned Air Vehicle.

see Interferometric SAR

Monitoring oil and gas production induced surface subsidence over time

InSAR derived indication of land deformation (09/2001-01/2004)

UAV applications in monitoring subsidence

Good agreement in NW_SE profile below between subsidence rates derived from precision GPS (points + error bars), and those derived from InSAR (continuous line).

UAV applications in monitoring subsidence