TerraSAR InSAR Investigation of Active Crustal Deformation

We aim to utilize advanced analysis of TerraSAR-X data to investigate the dynamics and interactions of solid Earth deformation processes, such as earthquakes and fault creep, and Earth surface processes, such as land subsidence and groundwater movements, in a densely populated, urban region, the San Francisco Bay Area. Ongoing deformation imaging reveals a number of natural hazards including elastic strain accumulation about seismologic faults, active landsliding, land subsidence and rebound, and settling of unconsolidated sediments that are highly susceptible to liquefaction. Up to now, we have ordered and received 20 more TerraSAR-X Spotlight Single Look Complex (SLC) images and a few Stripmap SLC images delivered by DLR and got a few preliminary results. The TerraSAR-X images were acquired over the San Francisco Bay Area particularly around an area of active landsliding, coastal subsidence and shallow Hayward fault creep near the city of Berkeley. Berkeley is situated between latitude 37.45 and 38.00, longitude 237.30 and 238.00. The data acquisition interval is from November, 2008 to now. Four types of Spotlight images and one type of Stripmap images in time sequence were ordered and acquired: spot_012, spot_038, spot_049, spot_075 and strip_003, having different look angles and pass directions. Access to the SAR data is via ftp about 10 days after acquisition date. The data is supplied in TerraSAR-X standard SLC COSAR (COmplex SAR) format with orbital information in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) header. The file contains integer real-complex components with double sampling and calibration constants for values. I am using ROI_PAC to do the interferograms. But ROI_PAC was designed to process the raw data rather SLC images. So there are some problems in azimuth processing with TerraSAR SLC data especially the Spotlight data. We now have some preliminary results of Stripmap interferograms and Spotlight interferograms but still work on those problems and hopefully will get better results in the near future. Results will be also compared with InSAR data from other spacecraft, including the ERS-1/2, Envisat, RADARSAT-1 and ALOS satellites.