We investigate surface deformations associated with two moderate-sized shallow earthquakes that occurred in the southeastern and northwestern stable regions of Mongolia using an analysis of ENVISAT/ASAR and ALOS/PALSAR data, respectively. Differential interferograms generated by a standard two-pass interferometric analysing technique depicted an uplift of up to ∼1 cm for the M W 5.2 Hatanbulag composite earthquake (20 July, 2005, moderate-size foreshock in three hours) and a subsidence of up to ∼10 cm for the M W 5.1 Büsiin Gol earthquake (19 January, 2008) in the radar line-of-sight directions, respectively. We inverted the observed deformations for the source parameters of the two earthquakes using elastic dislocation modeling. Our preferred model has geodetic moments of ∼3.83 ×10 17 (M w 5.6) and 5.56×10 16 N m (M w 5.1) for the Hatanbulag and Büsiin Gol earthquakes, respectively.

We present in this paper some results obtained in the field of space geodesy based on continuous GPS observations at the Astronomical Observatory of Mongolia. Starting with a brief historical overview of the main space geodetic activities carried out by the Astronomical Observatory in the past, we outline here current achievements in the application of GPS techniques in the geosciences research in Mongolia. We setup a local GNSS Data Center of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences to receive, quality control and process into derivative products the observation data coming from its continuously recording stations. The quality check performed on three non-real-time permanent stations reveals that all three stations show smooth trends of each parameter indicating good quality in data record and operation without any anomalous behavior.

ABSTRACT:The aim of this study is to conduct a forest resources study using optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite images. For this purpose, a forest-dominated site around the Lake Khuvsgul located in northern Mongolia is selected. As remote sensing (RS) data sources, panchromatic and multispectral Landsat 7 images as well as ALOS PALSAR L-band HH polarization data are used. To produce a reliable land cover map from the multisensor images, a novel refined maximum likelihood classification based on the spectral and spatial thresholds are applied and for the accuracy assessment an overall accuracy is used. Overall, the research demonstrates that advanced spatial technologies based on optical and microwave RS are reliable tools for different forest studies.