ERS AND ENVISAT SAR INTERFEROMETRY TO MEASURE LAND SUBSIDENCE IN THE VENICE LAGOON ON NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL POINT TARGETS

Montreux, Switzerland

The Venice Lagoon, Italy, is a unique worldwide
environment which is presently vulnerable due to loss in
surface elevation as a result of land subsidence referred
to the mean sea level. Land displacements in the Venice
coastland have been determined over time by traditional
monitoring techniques (i.e., spirit leveling and GPS).
Recently, SAR-based analyses have been used to
complement the ground-based methods. Interferometric
analysis on persistent point targets has been proved to
be very effective in detecting land displacement in the
coastal environment. ERS SAR and ENVISAT ASAR
images spanning the time period 1992-2005 and 2003-
2006, respectively, have been processed at regional and
local scale and on “natural” as well as “artificial”
reflectors.

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