Qinghai-Tibet railway thermal dilation monitoring using SAR interferometry

Climate change and anthropogenic activity are changing the dynamics balance of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) environmental balance, which would impact the safety and stability of the infrastructure. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway (QTR) is the longest structure in the QTP, and some section of the QTR´s embankment has been damaged due to the freezing and thawing of the QTP. With the high resolution SAR image, the structure of the QTR can be recognized and analyzed. In this paper, the freezing displacement and thermal dilation of the QTR has been analyzed. It is found that seasonal displacement over a range of 70mm, which may correlated with the water contend of the active layer. And the thermal dilation of the QTR has been founded and analyzed.