1137 
APPLICATION OF TM AND SAR IMAGES FUSION FOR LAND MONITORING IN 
COAL MINING AREAS 
Wenbo Wu a ’ 2 *, Lijing Bu b , Yang Ji b 
a * Technology Industry Department, Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin, China - wu - wenbo@sina.com 
b School of Geomatics, Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin, China 
Commission VII: WG VII/6 
KEY WORDS: Image Interpretation, Change Detection, SAR, Fusion, Texture Analysis, Land Cover 
ABSTRACT: 
The defection of single data source can be solved with fusion between TM and SAR images. It provides a better solution for land 
surface monitoring in the mining areas. Results of experiment showed that the fusion images can be integrated the advantages of 
each one, enhanced the recognition ability of features, improved land use/land cover classification accuracy. Further discussed the 
method of microwave remote sensing for ecological environment monitoring in mining areas, it is pointed out that the SAR images 
can be quantitative analysis of hydrogeological environment, the growth of crops and vegetation, land cover and soil resources, the 
INSAR images can be extracted collapse and change information. Research shows that the use of multi-source and multi-temporal 
images, fusion technology of TM and SAR images, could be favorable of dynamic monitoring for the ecological environment in 
mining areas, and provided basic data for exploitation of mining resources. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Since large-scale mining and the impact of human activities, the 
ecological environment of the mining areas was severely 
damaged and these are reflected on the evolution of land 
surface characteristics. So the land surface monitoring and 
analysis has become a hot research, remote sensing technology 
as an advanced information collection at present, with the 
amount of information, low cost and short cycle characteristics 
and become very important technical means for the monitoring 
of mining areas (Du Peijun,2005). With the recent years, the 
unprecedented development of microwave remote sensing, 
active microwave remote sensing such as the synthetic aperture 
radar imaging has been widely applied. SAR not only has all- 
weather, all the imaging features, but also on penetrate 
detection for certain features, therefore, in the field of Earth 
observation is superior, and land cover mapping, ecology and 
agriculture, solid earth sciences, hydrology, sea Ice, and other 
fields also has a wide range of applications. At the same time, 
the use of synthetic aperture radar images can also extract 
elevation information and establish high-precision DEM. It has 
tremendous significance for researching the situation of 
collapse on the ground in mining areas. 
2. SELECTION OF REMOTE SENSING DATA 
The evolution characteristics of the mine land surface, mainly 
in the following areas: hydrogeological environment, crops and 
vegetation growth, land resources covering, soil and the 
collapse situation. Remote sensing data sources in the selection 
aspect should be considered above all characteristics. TM 
images with multi-spectral characteristics, but its low spatial 
resolution, and SAR image generally has a higher spatial 
resolution, spectral resolution but lower, if the SAR image 
analysis combined with the corresponding region of TM images, 
can be integrated to reflect the reflective properties of visible 
light, near-infrared and microwave. 
According to the evolution characteristics of the mine land 
surface, from land use and cover, soil, hydrology, geology, crop 
type, vegetation growth in the six selected parameters of radar 
images below in Table 1, in the table parameters for the flat 
area, the situation for different problems, the radar data under 
the parameters of research priorities to select. The paper 
selected Landsat ETM + images and ENVISAT data sources, 
see Table2. 
Parameter 
Category 
Resolutio 
Incidenc 
Polarizati 
Wave 
n 
e angle 
on 
band 
Land Use 
And Land 
Cover 
Middle 
Large 
Multi 
polarizati 
on 
Multiba 
nd 
Soil Moisture 
High 
Low 
Multi 
polarizati 
C/X or 
L/P 
on 
Hydrology 
High 
Low 
Dual 
polarizati 
C/X or 
L/P 
on 
Geology 
High- 
Middle 
Large 
Multi 
polarizati 
on 
Multiba 
nd 
Multi 
Crops 
Middle 
Low 
polarizati 
C/X 
on 
Vegetation 
Growth 
Middle 
Low 
Multi 
polarizati 
C/X 
on 
Table 1. Selection of Radar parameters for different features 
* Corresponding author.