Measuring Kinematics of Slow-Moving Landslides from Satellite Images

Slow-moving landslides are geomorphological objects moving at rates from mm/year to several m/year. Despite being too slow to produce casualties, these slow ground motions can be precursory of more rapid motions with potential catastrophic consequences. Satellite remote sensing has proven to be very useful in detecting and monitoring slow-moving landslides over wide and sometimes remote areas. The launch of several generations of satellites in the last 20 years, with both very high resolutions and high revisit rates, and the development of INSAR and image correlation techniques applied both to optical and SAR images have allowed us to overcome some of the challenges provided by these objects, that are both small and kinematically variable with time. These new data and methods allowed retrieving displacements of slow-moving landslides from satellite remote sensing images with different aims: detection, monitoring, characterization and understanding of the physical underpinning processes. We review these methods and applications.