Soil moisture effects on InSAR time series in arid regions

Rowena B. Lohman, Teresa Jordan, & Junle Jiang

Published August 13, 2018, SCEC Contribution #8419, 2018 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #141

We examine the effects of soil moisture variations on InSAR time series analysis in arid and hyperarid regions, including the impact on phase and amplitude. We demonstrate that amplitude variations alone do not correlate well with precipitation except for in a subset of surface types, and that phase coherence time series can be a much better proxy for soil moisture variations and the associated effects on phase. We apply our approach to data from ESA's Sentinel-1a/b platform covering desert regions in Chile and Saudi Arabia, where infrequent rain events allow clear separation of time periods with and without a soil moisture perturbation. We also present initial results of our analysis in the Imperial Valley, California. We quantify the effects on line-of-sight displacement time histories and the potential to correct these effects.

Key Words
InSAR

Citation
Lohman, R. B., Jordan, T., & Jiang, J. (2018, 08). Soil moisture effects on InSAR time series in arid regions. Poster Presentation at 2018 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Tectonic Geodesy