Estimation of three-dimensional crustal movements in the 2011 Tohoku-Oki, Japan, earthquake from TerraSAR-X intensity images

Abstract

Abstract. The Tohoku-Oki earthquake on 11 March 2011 caused significant widespread crustal movements. In a previous study, we proposed a method for capturing twodimensional (2-D) surface displacements from a pair of preand post-event TerraSAR-X (TSX) intensity images. However, it is impossible to detect three-dimensional (3-D) displacements from one pair of TSX images. In this study, three pairs of pre-and post-event TSX images taken on different paths were used to estimate 3-D crustal movements. The relationship between the actual 3-D displacements and the converted 2-D movements in the synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) images was derived based on the observation model of a SAR sensor. The 3-D movements were then calculated from three sets of detected 2-D movements that occurred within a short time period. Compared with GPS observations, the proposed method was found to be capable of detecting the 3-D crustal movements with sub-pixel accuracy.

Ten Years of Experience with Scientific TerraSAR-X Data Utilization

“…37 percent of the geosphere proposals address tectonic issues. Co-and post-seismic surface deformations after an earthquake event are investigated by providing displacement fields and trends [116,117]. The findings help, for example, to improve the understanding and identification of the local tectonic settings [118] and even the interaction between two subsequent earthquake events [119] by combining the TerraSAR-X derived displacement field with GPS measurements and elastic dislocation models.…”

Evaluation of Atmospheric Effects on Interferograms Using DEM Errors of Fixed Ground Points

“…Damaged man-made buildings were extracted, using a feature wherein the coherence (i.e., the amplitude of the complex correlation coefficient between two SAR images) decreased for objects that underwent change [ 6 ]. In addition, small displacements were estimated by differential interferometry [ 7 ] and pixel matching [ 8 ]. However, those studies set the processing parameters of the method and determined the threshold according to the situation.…”