Chinese researchers have designed an improved remote sensing method for more efficient landslide monitoring.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing is a potential technique for long-term monitoring of landslide-prone areas.

Traditional pixel offset tracking methods work well for fast-moving landslides but still have some limitations.

The researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences proposed the improved offset tracking method to optimize a more efficient workflow, as well as an improved algorithm based on homogeneous samples.

The researchers applied the proposed method to study the evolution of the landslide that happened in 2018 in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, using SAR data from the Gaofen-3 satellite and the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2).

Compared with the traditional method, the proposed method showed higher efficiency and certainty, said their research article recently published in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment.

In the study, the researchers demonstrated that the SAR remote sensing plays an important role in global landslide monitoring, especially when ground live data are insufficient.