X- C- L-Band DInSAR investigation of the April 6th, 2009, Abruzzi earthquake

Abstract

This work aims to compare the co-seismic deformation maps obtained from different SAR sensors using the well known Differential SAR Interferometry technique. In particular, four deformation maps have been obtained from X-, C- and L-band SAR sensors onboard of COSMO-SkyMed, ENVISAT and ALOS satellite missions correspondingly. The test case is the April 6th, 2009 (Mw=6.3). This seismic event struck a densely populated region of the Apennines and was felt all over Central Italy. More than 65,000 people were evacuated from the city of L’Aquila and several nearby towns. The SAR dataset is rather inhomogeneous, since it includes interferograms with three different wavelengths, four acquisition geometries, different spatial resolutions, variable temporal and spatial baselines, and differently emphasized signal noise. However, we find that the detected displacements are highly comparable. The outcome of this letter is that even though such differences have an impact on the properties of the interferograms, the displacements can be measured with an overall discrepancy of about half the value of the shortest wavelength (COSMO-SkyMed) data set.