Landslide risks in open-pit mine areas are heightened by artificial slope modifications necessary for mining operations, endangering human life and property. On 22 February 2023, a catastrophic landslide occurred at the Xinjing Open-Pit Coal Mine in Inner Mongolia, China, resulting in 53 fatalities and economic losses totaling 28.7 million USD. Investigating the pre-, co-, and post-failure deformation processes and exploring the potential driving mechanisms are crucial to preventing similar tragedies. In this study, we used multi-source optical and radar images alongside satellite geodetic methods to analyze the event. The results revealed pre-failure acceleration at the slope toe, large-scale southward displacement during collapse, and ongoing deformation across the mine area due to mining operations and waste accumulation. The collapse was primarily triggered by an excessively steep, non-compliant artificial slope design and continuous excavation at the slope’s base. Furthermore, our experiments indicated that the commonly used Sentinel-1 Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) significantly underestimated landslide deformation due to the maximum detectable deformation gradient (MDDG) limitation. In contrast, the high-spatial-resolution Fucheng-1 provided more accurate monitoring results with a higher MDDG. This underscores the importance of carefully assessing the MDDG when employing InSAR techniques to monitor rapid deformation in mining areas.

The Tianshan is an intracontinental orogenic belt that has experienced over 100 Mw ≥ 6 earthquakes since 1700. However, strain rates and slip deficit rates on mapped faults in this region—key factors in assessing its seismic potential—remain underexplored. Using an updated interseismic Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) velocity field from 936 stations and four geodetic strain models, we compute surface horizontal strain rates and invert them to estimate slip deficit rates on 97 major mapped faults. We find that surface strain is primarily concentrated (∼70%) in the western half of the Tianshan, with ∼60% of the strain across the entire orogen accommodated by the mapped faults. Incorporating historical seismicity, we assess the seismic moment budget and identify 20 fault segments capable of generating future Mw ≥ 7.0 earthquakes.