InSAR Observations of Construction-Induced Coastal Subsidence on Miami's Barrier Islands, Florida
Creators
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1.
University of Miami
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2.
Leibniz University Hannover
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Florida Atlantic University
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4.
University of Houston
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Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
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6.
German Aerospace Center
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7.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
This study utilizes Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) to examine subsidence along the coastal strip of the Miami barrier islands from 2016 to 2023. Using Sentinel‐1 data, we document vertical displacements ranging from 2 to 8 cm, affecting a total of 35 coastal buildings and their vicinity. About half of the subsiding structures are younger than 2014 and at the majority of them subsidence decays with time. This correlation suggests that the subsidence is related to construction activities. In northern and central Sunny Isles Beach, where 23% of coastal structures were built during the last decade, nearly 70% are experiencing subsidence. The majority of the older subsiding structures show sudden onset or sudden acceleration of subsidence, suggesting that this is due to construction activities in their vicinity; we have identified subsidence at distance of 200 m, possibly up to 320 m, from construction sites. We attribute the observed subsidence to load‐induced, prolonged creep deformation of the sandy layers within the limestone, which is accelerated, if not instigated, by construction activities. Distant subsidence from a construction site could indicate extended sandy deposits. Anthropogenic and natural groundwater movements could also be driving the creep deformation. This study demonstrates that high‐rise construction on karstic barrier islands can induce creep deformation in sandy layer within the limestone succession persisting for a decade or longer. It showcases the potential of InSAR technology for monitoring both building settlement and structural stability.
Copyright and License
© 2024. The Author(s).
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Acknowledgement
F.A., E.A. and F.A. acknowledge support from the University of Miami Laboratory For Integrative Knowledge (U-Link) Climate Resilience program. The work from P.M. and A.T. was performed at the University of Houston under a contract with the NASA Decadal Survey Incubation Program: Science and Technology (NNH21ZDA001N-DSI—80NSSC 22K1096). A. P. was supported by funding from the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport within the framework of SAR4Infra project. We thank Michael Sukop for suggesting tidal flow and stormwater injection as driving mechanisms and Randall Parkinson for discussions. The international collaboration was supported by a Helmholtz International Fellowship to FA. We thank Alfredo Tererro for help with data visualisation, Michael Sukop for suggesting tidal flowand storm water injection as driving mechanisms, Randall Parkinson for discussions, and Robert Zinke for his review. Sentinel-1 data were provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) through the Alaska European Space Agency (ESA) through the Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) and TerraSAR-X data by the German Space Agency through project COA3837. For computations we used the Stampede3 system at Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and Jetstream2 system at the Indiana University through allocation EAR200012 from the advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program, which is supported by U.S. National Science Foundation Grants 2138259, 2138286, 2138307, 2137603, and 2138296.
Contributions
Conceptualization: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani, Falk Amelung, Khaled Sobhan, Gregor P. Eberli.
Data curation: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani, Falk Amelung, Andreas Piter, Amin Tavakkoliestahbanati.
Formal analysis: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani, Falk Amelung, Andreas Piter, Amin Tavakkoliestahbanati.
Funding acquisition: Falk Amelung.
Investigation: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani, Falk Amelung.
Methodology: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani, Falk Amelung, Andreas Piter, Amin Tavakkoliestahbanati, Mahmud Haghshenas Haghighi, Mahdi Motagh, Pietro Milillo.
Project administration: Falk Amelung.
Resources: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani, Falk Amelung.
Software: Andreas Piter, Amin Tavakkoliestahbanati, Mahmud Haghshenas Haghighi, Mahdi Motagh, Pietro Milillo, Sara Mirzaee.
Supervision: Falk Amelung.
Validation: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani, Falk Amelung.
Visualization: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani.
Writing – original draft: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani.
Writing – review & editing: Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani, Falk Amelung, Andreas Piter, Khaled Sobhan, Amin Tavakkoliestahbanati, Gregor P. Eberli, Mahmud Haghshenas Haghighi, Mahdi Motagh, Pietro Milillo, Antonio Nanni, Esber Andiroglu.
Data Availability
The InSAR displacement results for Suuny Isles, Surfside and Bal Harbour, and Miami Beach are available on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12699617). Figures are prepared using GMT (Wessel et al., 2013) and Matplotlib (Hunter, 2007).
Supplemental Material
Supporting information (PDF).
Files
Earth and Space Science - 2024 - Aziz Zanjani - InSAR Observations of Construction‐Induced Coastal Subsidence on Miami s.pdf
Additional details
Related works
- Is supplemented by
- Dataset: 10.5281/zenodo.12699617 (DOI)
- Supplemental Material: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1029%2F2024EA003852&file=2024EA003852-sup-0001-Supporting+Information+SI-S01.pdf (URL)
Funding
- University of Miami
- University of Houston System
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NNH21ZDA001N‐DSI
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NSSC 22K1096
- Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure
- National Science Foundation
- OAC-2138259
- National Science Foundation
- OAC-2138286
- National Science Foundation
- OAC-2138307
- National Science Foundation
- OAC-2137603
- National Science Foundation
- OAC-2138296
Dates
- Accepted
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2024-11-23Accepted
- Available
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2024-12-13Version of Record online
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Publication Status
- Published