Polarimetric SAR Analysis of Landslides at X-Band Following the Wenchuan Earthquake

Polarimetric response of landslides areas at X-band was studied by Chinese high-resolution airborne SAR. Polarimetric decomposition including Yamaguchi four-component decomposition and Cloude decomposition are used to analyse the scattering mechanisms of the landslides caused by the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in southwestern China. The experimental results indicate that areas affected by large-scale landslides show complicated scattering mechanisms at X-band, which is a mixture of surface, double-bounce, and volume scattering. Nevertheless, the surrounding forested regions are dominated by volume scattering. Simple classification result by polarimetric scattering similarity is also presented, which shows rough contours of the landslides areas and verify our previous analysis. From these results, we can conclude that landslides mapping using fully polarimetric data has significant operational advantages over single-polarization data for rapid response and management of landslides disasters.