A new method for measuring deformation on volcanoes and other natural terrains using InSAR persistent scatterers

TLDR

The study introduces a new InSAR persistent scatterer method for analyzing episodic crustal deformation in non‑urban, volcanic settings. The method identifies PS pixels using phase stability and spatial correlation, removes residual topographic phase, and unwraps PS phases both spatially and temporally to capture temporally variable volcanic deformation. The method successfully detects phase‑stable scatterers independent of amplitude, enabling deformation analysis in areas where conventional InSAR fails due to decorrelation.

Abstract

We present here a new InSAR persistent scatterer (PS) method for analyzing episodic crustal deformation in non‐urban environments, with application to volcanic settings. Our method for identifying PS pixels in a series of interferograms is based primarily on phase characteristics and finds low‐amplitude pixels with phase stability that are not identified by the existing amplitude‐based algorithm. Our method also uses the spatial correlation of the phases rather than a well‐defined phase history so that we can observe temporally‐variable processes, e.g., volcanic deformation. The algorithm involves removing the residual topographic component of flattened interferogram phase for each PS, then unwrapping the PS phases both spatially and temporally. Our method finds scatterers with stable phase characteristics independent of amplitudes associated with man‐made objects, and is applicable to areas where conventional InSAR fails due to complete decorrelation of the majority of scatterers, yet a few stable scatterers are present.