We have studied the utility of high resolution synthetic aperture radar for levee monitoring using UAVSAR data collected over the dikes and levees in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the lower Mississippi River. Our study has focused on detecting and tracking changes that are indicative of potential problem spots, namely deformation of the levees, subsidence along the levee toe, and seepage through the levees, making use of polarimetric and interferometric SAR techniques. Here we present some results of those studies, which show that high resolution, low noise SAR imaging could supplement more traditional ground-based monitoring methods by providing early indicators of seepage and deformation.
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Jones et al. (2012) studied this question.