Urban land subsidence poses a significant threat in rapidly urbanizing regions, threatening infrastructure integrity and sustainable development. This study focuses on Mandalay, Myanmar, and presents a novel clustering framework—Dynamic Time Warping and Trend-based Longest Common Subsequence with Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (DTLCS-AHC)—to classify spatiotemporal deformation patterns from Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) time series derived from Sentinel-1A imagery covering January 2022 to March 2025. The method identifies four characteristic deformation regimes: stable uplift, stable subsidence, primary subsidence, and secondary subsidence. Time–frequency analysis employing Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) and Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) reveals seasonal oscillations in stable areas. Notably, a transition from subsidence to uplift was detected in specific areas approximately seven months prior to the Mw 7.7 earthquake, but causal relationships require further validation. This study further establishes correlations between subsidence and both urban expansion and rainfall patterns. A physically informed conceptual model is developed through multi-source data integration, and cross-city validation in Yangon confirms the robustness and generalizability of the approach. This research provides a scalable technical framework for deformation monitoring and risk assessment in tropical, data-scarce urban environments.

Pyrite trace element chemistry, lithogeochemistry, and U–Pb dating of detrital zircon were carried out on the Devonian black shales and limestones, Northern Shan State, Myanmar. The findings indicate that the Upper to Middle Devonian Padaukpin Formation is enriched in CaO and show a similar content in SiO₂, TiO₂, Al₂O₃, Fe₂O₃, and K₂O compared to Post-Archean Australian Shale (PAAS). The Middle Devonian Wetwun Formation is depleted in SiO₂, TiO₂, Al₂O₃, Fe₂O₃, and K₂O but enriched in CaO relative to PAAS. The Lower Devonian Zebingyi Formation is enriched in CaO and strongly depleted in SiO₂, TiO₂, Al₂O₃, Fe₂O₃, and K₂O compared to PAAS. Total organic carbon (TOC) remains high in the Lower Devonian between 5% and 9.7% (mean = 8%) but drops in the Middle Devonian to value of 2.5% to 3.2% (mean = 2.9%), only to rise again in the Middle to Upper Devonian to 9.7%. Using trace element (TE) and TOC%, the contents of trace elements Mo, As, Zn, Cu, V, and Ni are inversely proportional to the TOC content in the Upper and Middle Devonian. Pyrite trace element chemistry shows that the beginning of the Middle Devonian, in the Lower Wetwun black shale, is marked by elevated levels of the gold (up to 1.1 ppm Au), which corresponding to a peak in oxygen content in the atmosphere (up to 28.7 wt% O₂) in oxic to anoxic redox conditions. The evidence suggests that the Wetwun shales are likely gold source rocks. The research outcome indicates a limited dataset of age dating pointing to three maximum depositional ages of 399, 480, and 537 Ma. There are a few zircon age peaks ranging from over 400 Ma up to 2500 Ma, suggesting a discernible connection with Gondwana; however, further work is required to confirm this relationship.