Deformation within the Salton Trough as imaged with InSAR time series analysis

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(Public Law 111-5)资助的。项目意义：近年来，大地测量数据的可用性呈爆炸性增长，包括连续GPS、应变仪和干涉合成孔径雷达(InSAR)，为探索许多不同的地面运动研究途径开辟了新的可能性，包括沉降、火山过程、构造变形和滑坡活动。目前充分利用这些数据的障碍包括难以吸收来自不同仪器的观测数据，以及将数据覆盖范围扩大到传统上对大地测量研究构成挑战的地理区域。拟议的工作将通过开发改进的时间序列分析工具并培训学生和研究人员应用这些工具来增加InSAR数据的可及性。我们将把我们的方法应用于南加州帝国断层上的形变的具体例子，该断层在过去的一个世纪中经历了两次大地震(MW 6.6和MW 7.1)，并且位于圣安德烈亚斯断层南部、众多地热发电厂和南加州的人口中心附近。技术描述：我们建议改进InSAR时间序列分析，将传统的全干涉图方法的优点与点目标分析(也称为永久性散射体)相结合。我们将在世界各地的各种信号大小和噪声特征的问题上测试这些方法，特别是加利福尼亚州帝国断层的地震间和瞬时断层滑动。我们将重点研究应用于这种时间序列分析的噪声和灵敏度阈值的特征，目的是提高其他研究人员可以将这种方法应用于新的目标问题的简易性。我们将向一般社区提供所有时间序列分析代码和合成实例，包括教程和课程材料，说明如何将逆方法应用于利用大地测量数据研究活动构造中的问题。我们预计，我们对大气噪声影响的描述对我们的反演的影响也将与旨在对干涉图中对流层水汽的影响进行建模和/或校正的研究有关。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Project Significance: In recent years, there has been an explosion in the availability of geodetic data including continuous GPS, strainmeters and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), opening up new possibilities for exploration of many diverse avenues of ground motion research, including subsidence, volcanic processes, tectonic deformation and landslide activity. Current barriers to full utilization of these data include the difficulty involved with assimilating observations from diverse sets of instruments, as well as extension of the data coverage to geographical areas that have traditionally posed challenges to geodetic studies. The proposed work would increase the accessibility of InSAR data by developing improved time series analysis tools and training students and researchers to apply them. We will apply our methods to the specific example of deformation across the Imperial Fault in Southern California, which experienced two large (Mw 6.6 and Mw 7.1) earthquake in the past century, and which is situated in close proximity to the southern San Andreas Fault, numerous geothermal power plants, and population centers within Southern California.Technical Description: We propose improvements to InSAR time series analysis that combine strengths of traditional, whole-interferogram methods with point target analysis (also known as permanent, or persistent scatterers). We will test these methods on problems around the world spanning a wide range of signal sizes and noise characteristics, with particular emphasis on interseismic and transient fault slip for the Imperial fault in California. We will focus on the characterization of noise and sensitivity thresholds that apply to this sort of time series analysis, with the goal of improving the ease with which such methods can be applied by other researchers to new target problems. We will make all time series analysis codes and synthetic examples available to the general community, including tutorials and course materials that address how inverse methods can be applied to studying problems in active tectonics with geodetic data. We expect that the impact of our characterization of the impact of atmospheric noise on our inversions will also be relevant to research aimed at modeling and/or correcting the effects of tropospheric water vapor in interferograms.