InSAR time series analysis of crustal deformation in southern California from 1992-2010

Since early the 1990’s, Interferometric Satellite Aperture Radar (InSAR) data has had some success imaging surface deformation of plate boundary deformation zones. The ~18 years of extensive data collection over southern California now make it possible to generate a long time interval InSAR-based line-of-sight (LOS) velocity map to examine the resolution of both steady-state and transient deformation processes. We perform InSAR time series analysis on an extensive catalog of ERS-1/2 and Envisat data from 1992 up to the present in southern California by applying a variant of the Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) time series analysis approach. Despite the limitation imposed by atmospheric phase delay, the large number of data acquisitions and long duration of data sampling allow us to effectively suppress the atmospheric noise through spatiotemporal smoothing in the time series analysis. We integrate an updated version of a California GPS velocity solution with InSAR to constrain the long wavelength deformation signals while estimating and removing the effect of orbital error. A large number of interferograms (> 800) over 5 tracks in southern California have been processed and analyzed. We examine the time dependency of resulting deformation patterns. Preliminary results from the ~18 year time series already reveal some interesting features. For example, the InSAR LOS displacements show significant transient variations in greater spatial resolution following the 1999 Mw7.1 Hector Mine earthquake. The 7-year post-seismic rate map demonstrates a broad transient deformation pattern and much localized deformation near the fault surface trace, reflecting a combined effect from afterslip, poroelastic, and viscoelastic relaxation at different spatiotemporal scales. We observe a variation of deformation rate across the Blackwater-Little lake fault system in the Eastern California Shear Zone, suggesting a possible transient variation over this part of the plate boundary. The InSAR-derived deformation map and time series also provide great spatiotemporal details of deformation signals caused by different sources, enabling the separation of tectonic and non-tectonic signals when combined with continuous GPS data from dense networks such as the Earthscope PBO.