the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Rapid landslide identification using synthetic aperture radar amplitude change detection on the Google Earth Engine
Abstract. The rapid and accurate mapping of landslides is critical for emergency response, disaster mitigation, and improving our understanding of where landslides occur. Satellite-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can be used to identify landslides, often within days after triggering events, because it penetrates clouds, operates day and night, and is regularly acquired worldwide. Although there are many landslide detection methods using SAR, most require downloading a large volume of data to a local system and specialized processing software and training. Here we present a SAR-based amplitude change detection approach designed for those without SAR expertise that uses multi-temporal stacks of freely available data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites to identify landslides on Google Earth Engine (GEE). We provide strategies that can aid in rapid response and event inventory mapping. We test our GEE-based approach in a ~ 277 km2 area in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan where ~ 3,800 landslides were triggered by rainfall in July 2018. Our ability to detect landslides improves with the total number of SAR images acquired before and after the landslide event, by combining both ascending and descending acquisition geometry data, and by using topographic data to mask out flat areas unlikely to experience landslides. Importantly, our GEE approach allows the broader hazards and landslide community to utilize these state-of-the-art remote sensing data.
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RC1: 'Comments to the manuscript', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 Oct 2020
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AC2: 'Author response to RC1', Alexander Handwerger, 13 Nov 2020
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EC1: 'comment on reply letters', Mahdi Motagh, 17 Nov 2020
- AC4: '2nd Author response to RC1', Alexander Handwerger, 27 Nov 2020
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EC1: 'comment on reply letters', Mahdi Motagh, 17 Nov 2020
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AC2: 'Author response to RC1', Alexander Handwerger, 13 Nov 2020
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RC2: 'Comment on Rapid landslide identification using synthetic aperture radar amplitude change detection on the Google Earth Engine', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Nov 2020
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AC1: 'Author response to RC2', Alexander Handwerger, 13 Nov 2020
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EC2: 'comment on the reply letter', Mahdi Motagh, 17 Nov 2020
- AC3: '2nd Author response to RC2', Alexander Handwerger, 27 Nov 2020
-
EC2: 'comment on the reply letter', Mahdi Motagh, 17 Nov 2020
-
AC1: 'Author response to RC2', Alexander Handwerger, 13 Nov 2020
-
RC1: 'Comments to the manuscript', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 Oct 2020
-
AC2: 'Author response to RC1', Alexander Handwerger, 13 Nov 2020
-
EC1: 'comment on reply letters', Mahdi Motagh, 17 Nov 2020
- AC4: '2nd Author response to RC1', Alexander Handwerger, 27 Nov 2020
-
EC1: 'comment on reply letters', Mahdi Motagh, 17 Nov 2020
-
AC2: 'Author response to RC1', Alexander Handwerger, 13 Nov 2020
-
RC2: 'Comment on Rapid landslide identification using synthetic aperture radar amplitude change detection on the Google Earth Engine', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Nov 2020
-
AC1: 'Author response to RC2', Alexander Handwerger, 13 Nov 2020
-
EC2: 'comment on the reply letter', Mahdi Motagh, 17 Nov 2020
- AC3: '2nd Author response to RC2', Alexander Handwerger, 27 Nov 2020
-
EC2: 'comment on the reply letter', Mahdi Motagh, 17 Nov 2020
-
AC1: 'Author response to RC2', Alexander Handwerger, 13 Nov 2020
Model code and software
Google Earth Engine SAR landslide detection Mong-Han Huang https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4060268
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