Multidisciplinary exploitation of spaceborne DInSAR data for investigating volcanoes and seismic areas

Spaceborne Differential SAR Interferometry (DInSAR) is a widely exploited technique that allows measuring ground displacements with centimeter/millimeter accuracy at a large spatial scale. The recent availability of worldwide DInSAR measurements, as well as their standardization in terms of format and access procedures, has further pushed this technique toward its application and integration with other data sources for carrying out multidisciplinary analysis of natural and anthropogenic surface deformation phenomena. In the following, we show some examples carried out in volcanic and seismic areas, testifying the capability of the DInSAR technique to be exploited in multidisciplinary contexts.

For what concerns volcanic scenarios, we focus on the Campi Flegrei caldera (Italy) which is experiencing a continuous ground uplift since 2005, with a main radial pattern centered in the Rione Terra district of Pozzuoli. The analysis of detailed DInSAR measurements, retrieved by processing image time series acquired by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and the Italian COSMO-SkyMed SAR constellations, allowed the identification of a geodetic anomaly in the Campi Flegrei long term uplift pattern, i.e. an area that shows a deficit in the uplift. The amount of this deficit has been analyzed by also considering other data sources, such as the seismicity of the area, showing a high correlation factor. In addition, the location and spatial extension of the anomaly have been further demonstrated to be related to the geology of the area. These findings provide intriguing insights into the volcanic evolution process and the related hazard.

With reference to the development of seismic analysis, we concentrate on EPOSAR, which is an operative service based on Copernicus Sentinel-1 data deployed by CNR-IREA, that allows generating, at the global scale and in a systematic way, co-seismic DInSAR ground displacement measurements once the satellite data are available after a major earthquake (M_w>5.5, ipocenter depth < 20km) occurrence. These products are automatically provided to the scientific community through the EPOS data portal according to a defined standard. The availability of these kinds of measurements also allowed the development, in collaboration with INGV, of a new service that operates in a cascade to the previous one and retrieves the seismic source that generated the earthquakes. To this aim, the DInSAR measurements are jointly exploited with the available seismic moment tensors provided by the main global seismic services (e.g., USGS and INGV). This automatic service is another example of multidisciplinary data integration and it is worth noting that it strongly benefits from the open access and interoperability policies adopted by the respective data providers.

 

This work has been carried out with the support of: IREA-DPC agreement; HE EPOS-ON (GA 101131592); PNRR MEET (IR00000025); PNRR CN-HPC (CN00000013); PNRR GeoSciences (IR00000037); PNRR MOST (CN00000023).