title: Radar interferometry offers new insights into threats to the Angkor site.
abstract: The conservation of World Heritage is critical to the cultural and social sustainability of regions and nations. Risk monitoring and preventive diagnosis of threats to heritage sites in any given ecosystem are a complex and challenging task. Taking advantage of the performance of Earth Observation technologies, we measured the impacts of hitherto imperceptible and poorly understood factors of groundwater and temperature variations on the monuments in the Angkor World Heritage site (400 km2). We developed a two-scale synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) approach. We describe spatial-temporal displacements (at millimeter-level accuracy), as measured by high-resolution TerraSAR/TanDEM-X satellite images, to provide a new solution to resolve the current controversy surrounding the potential structural collapse of monuments in Angkor. Multidisciplinary analysis in conjunction with a deterioration kinetics model offers new insights into the causes that trigger the potential decline of Angkor monuments. Our results show that pumping groundwater for residential and touristic establishments did not threaten the sustainability of monuments during 2011 to 2013; however, seasonal variations of the groundwater table and the thermodynamics of stone materials are factors that could trigger and/or aggravate the deterioration of monuments. These factors amplify known impacts of chemical weathering and biological alteration of temple materials. The InSAR solution reported in this study could have implications for monitoring and sustainable conservation of monuments in World Heritage sites elsewhere.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 9 Dengzhuang South Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100094, China.; International Centre on Space Technologies for Natural and Cultural Heritage under the Auspices of UNESCO, No. 9 Dengzhuang South Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100094, China.
authors.forename: Fulong
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-1144-0004
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 9 Dengzhuang South Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100094, China.; International Centre on Space Technologies for Natural and Cultural Heritage under the Auspices of UNESCO, No. 9 Dengzhuang South Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100094, China.
authors.forename: Huadong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, ShaTin, New Territories, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Peifeng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, ShaTin, New Territories, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 9 Dengzhuang South Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100094, China.; International Centre on Space Technologies for Natural and Cultural Heritage under the Auspices of UNESCO, No. 9 Dengzhuang South Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100094, China.
authors.forename: Cheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 9 Dengzhuang South Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100094, China.; International Centre on Space Technologies for Natural and Cultural Heritage under the Auspices of UNESCO, No. 9 Dengzhuang South Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100094, China.
authors.forename: Natarajan
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9936-3917
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ishwaran
authors.affiliation: Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap, Bangkoung Village, Ampil District, Siem Reap Town, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia.
authors.forename: Peou
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7055-9895
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hang
keywords: Angkor site; Earth observation; Monument collapse; Multidisciplinary analysis; Radar Interfereometry; World heritage; ecosystem; sustainability