An integrated method based on DInSAR, MAI and displacement gradient tensor for mapping the 3D coseismic deformation field related to the 2011 Tarlay earthquake (Myanmar)

The satellite differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DInSAR) technology has been widely applied for mapping the ground deformation associated with the geophysical events such as earthquakes. However, the conventional DInSAR can measure only the one-dimensional (1D) ground displacement along the radar line of sight (LOS), and the crucial displacement measurements, e.g., near the epicenter and along the surface ruptures, are usually not available or degraded in quality due to the significant deformation gradients. With availability of satellite SAR images acquired along ascending and descending orbits, this paper proposes an integrated method to map the three-dimensional (3D) coseismic deformation field by combining DInSAR for detecting LOS displacements, the multiple aperture interferometry (MAI) for detecting along-track displacements, and the displacement gradient tensor (DGT) model for characterizing spatial correlation of ground displacements. The proposed method (termed as InSAR-DGT) was first tested through an experiment of recovering 3D displacements from a simulated coseismic deformation field. We then applied the proposed method to map the 3D coseismic deformation field related to the 2011 Tarlay earthquake (Myanmar) by using the ascending and descending ALOS PALSAR images. Both the results derived for the simulated experiment and the 2011 Tarlay earthquake show that the quality of the 3D coseismic displacements can be raised efficiently by the InSAR-DGT method, and the precisions in the east-west (E-W), north-south (N-S) and up-down (U-D) displacements for the 2011 Tarlay earthquake are increased 22%, 36% and 24%, respectively. The validation indicates that the improved coseismic deformation field for the 2011 Tarlay earthquake is in good agreement with the deformation field simulated from the existing optimized fault model. The number of the missing data points in the 3D coseismic deformation field can be reduced significantly by the InSAR-DGT method. It is revealed that the causative fault (i.e., the west part of the Nam Ma Fault) for the Tarlay earthquake generated a left-lateral slip that was accompanied by a minor normal dip-slip component. The careful interpretation demonstrates that the causative fault structures include the determined main fault segment and the two suspected branched segments at east of the Tarlay town. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.