Change detection of an earthquake-induced barrier lake based on remote sensing image classification

Abstract

The earthquake-induced barrier lakes that are caused by landslides are at risk of bursting after excessive rainfall, and they are a serious threat to the surrounding residents. This paper proposes a change detection approach of the barrier lake using the method of post-classification comparison combined with background subtraction. The case studied in the paper is the detection of the Tangjiashan barrier lake, which is one of the largest lakes induced by the Wenchuan Earthquake on 12 May 2008. Both the pre- (31 March 2007) and post-earthquake (16 May 2008) images of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2 (AVINER-2) were collected in the paper. The results show that the river widened through the Zhangping area, increasing from 90 m pre-earthquake to 545 m post-earthquake, and the surface area of the barrier lake increased from 0.945 km² to 1.471 km².

Acknowledgments

This paper has been supported by the National State Key Basic Research Project (grant no. 2007CB714404); Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 40871173); Special Grant For Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases (2008ZX10004-012); Key Science and Technology R&D program of Qinghai Province (grant no. 2006-6-160-01). Thanks to Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for providing the paper with the ALOS AVNIR-2 data. We are grateful to Professor Ramesh P. Singh for his fruitful suggestions in improving the language of the paper. The authors also wish to thank all the people that have provided help with the paper.