Potential and Limitation of SPOT-5 Ortho-Image Correlation to Investigate the Cinematics of Landslides: The Example of “Mare à Poule d’Eau” (Réunion, France)

Over the last 10 years, the accessibility of high spatial resolution remote sensing images has strongly increased. These images are available in ortho-rectified format which do not necessitate any further geometrical processing to be analyzed. In parallel, image correlation software has become more efficient and friendly. In this paper, image correlation methods are tested to evaluate their potential and limitations to measure the surface displacements in a complex case of a landslide located in a tropical environment. This studied landslide, called “Mare à Poule d’Eau”, is located in the Salazie erosion watershed in Réunion Island (France). This landslide is monitored daily by a DGPS station which registers the south-north displacements. Two pairs of ortho-rectified SPOT-5 images at 2.5 m resolution provided by Kalideos (http://kalideos.cnes.fr) were selected. The first pair frames the period between 2002 and 2005 during which the landslide activity was low. The second pair of images (2006–2008) frames a period of time during which the landslide was more active. Fifty-nine Image Control Points (ICP) were selected on the images by the SIFT method (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) and visually controlled. The shifts of these points used as external control are estimated for the two time periods. Two image correlator softwares are used: MicMac and Cosi-Corr. The results obtained by the two correlators are similar. For the 2002–2005 period, the shift measured by correlators in the landslide is similar to the shift outside the landslide. This means that the displacement cannot be detected and estimated during periods of low activity of the landslide. The shift of the landslide for the 2006–2008 period is out of noise and reaches 8.5 m. The displacement can be estimated by applying a correction factor extracted from the ICP located in the stable areas. The potential and limits of the image correlation in such complex environments is discussed. A strategy is proposed to evaluate the quality of the results and to extract the displacement signal from the shift measurements