Multi-Temporal InSAR Monitoring of the Beninar Dam (SE Spain)

This work focuses on a reservoir with water leaks since its construction, the Benínar reservoir. The purpose of this reservoir was to regulate the Adra River basin, lying between the provinces of Almería and Granada, and located south of Sierra Nevada Mountains (in the Inner Zones of the Betic Cordilleras, SE Spain). This basin extends over 746 km2, at an altitude of 2780 m, with a very rough terrain and frequent torrential water flow. Due to the continuous extension of greenhouses in the east and west parts of Almería, the water demand for agriculture and urban consumption increases day by day. As a consequence, aquifers are being overexploited, causing the current system to not be sustainable for a long time, that is, the storage capacity of the underground media and their possible contributions to an efficient management of resources have not been adequately taken into account. The Benínar dam has always had problems with water leaks. The dam was built even knowing that the land was not the most suitable, due to the frequent earth movements that took place in the town of Benínar, which was submerged beneath the waters of the reservoir. In this work, we process multi-temporal SAR datasets coming from the C-band satellites ERS-1/2, Envisat, and Sentinel-1A/B using MT-InSAR techniques, being able to monitor the deformation behavior of this dam for a long time period of more than 25 years, from 1992 to 2018.