New Radar Interferometric Time Series Analysis Toolbox Released

TLDR

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is a geodetic technique that measures Earth surface deformation caused by earthquakes, magma movement, landslides, fluid migration, and glacier flow by analyzing phase changes in microwave reflections from SAR instruments, and several open‑source tools already enable such analyses. InSAR derives surface deformation estimates by combining amplitude and phase information from two SAR images of the same area taken at different times to generate an interferogram.

Abstract

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) has become an important geodetic tool for measuring deformation of Earth's surface due to various geophysical phenomena, including slip on earthquake faults, subsurface migration of magma, slow‐moving landslides, movement of shallow crustal fluids (e.g., water and oil), and glacier flow. Airborne and spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instruments transmit microwaves toward Earth's surface and detect the returning reflected waves. The phase of the returned wave depends on the distance between the satellite and the surface, but it is also altered by atmospheric and other effects. InSAR provides measurements of surface deformation by combining amplitude and phase information from two SAR images of the same location taken at different times to create an interferogram. Several existing open‐source analysis tools [ Rosen et al ., 2004; Rosen et al . 2011; Kampes et al . 2003; Sandwell et al . 2011] enable scientists to exploit observations from radar satellites acquired at two different epochs to produce a surface displacement map.