Due to the ongoing collision between Indian and Eurasian plates, the internal blocks of the Tibet plateau are experiencing eastward extrusion. Resulting from the blocking of the Sichuan Basin along the eastern boundary of the Bayanhar block, the plateau begins to rotate clockwise around the eastern syntaxis, and continues to move toward the IndoChina Peninsula. Such process forms the Hengduan Mountains with thousands of gullies in the Sichuan-Yunnan region, and generates major earthquakes across the entire Red River Fault, where infrastructures and residents are seriously threatened by the frequent earthquakes. InSAR observations feature a high spatial resolution and short intervals, ranging from several days to over a month, depending on the satellite revisit period.
On May 21, 2021, an earthquake struck the Yangbi city. This event provides a rare opportunity to look at the local tectonic and seismic risk in the north of the Red River Fault. We processed the Sentinel-1 SAR data with D-InSAR technology and generated the surface deformation caused by the Yangbi M_S6.4 earthquake occurring on May 21, 2021. Due to the abundant vegetation and moisture in Yunnan, significant atmospheric noise needs to be corrected for the derived InSAR displacement field. The results show a maximum deformation of~0.07m in line-of-sight for ascending track and~0.08m for descending track. The quality of interferogram on the ascending track is low, and only one of the quadrans can be distinguished, the rest of the interferogram is regarded as phase noise. However, the descending interferogram contains two deformation regions, with its long axis roughly along the NW-SE direction. The northeast part of interferogram moves towards the satellite, while the southwest part moves away from the satellite. The InSAR interferograms pattern shows a right-lateral strike-slip movement. Then, we combined coseismic displacement data obtained from the Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)and InSAR(both the ascending and descending)to invert the coseismic slip model of the Yangbi earthquake. The inversion test shows that our data cannot give strong constraints for the dip orientations, and the two slip models with opposite dip orientation can explain the observations within the noise level. No matter what the dip orientation is, the slip models show that the coseismic slip concentrated at depth of 2~10km, with a maximum slip of~0.8m, which corresponds to a moment magnitude of M_S6.4, and is consistent with body-wave-based focal mechanism. But the relocated aftershocks in 3 hours immediately after the mainshock reveal a SW-dipping fault plane 10km away to the west of Weixi-Qiaohou-Weishan Fault, we therefore conclude that the Yangbi earthquake ruptured a SW-dipping dextral fault, which is previously unknown. To analyze the effects of the Yangbi earthquake on the seismic risk of the regional dextral faults, we estimated the Coulomb stress change caused by our preferred slip model. The Coulomb stress at 7.5km depth is negative, indicating stress unloading, while the Coulomb stress at 15km depth is positive, indicating slightly loading, but still less than the empirical triggering threshold. The results indicate that Yangbi earthquake partially relieved the strain accumulated on the nearby faults, thus restraining the seismic risk of these faults.

The Aketao M_S6.7 earthquake occurred on November 25, 2016, which was located at the intersection of Gongur extensional system and Pamir frontal thrust. This region is characterized by complex fault structure, high altitude, complex terrain conditions, sparsely populated and few observed data, so the conventional geodetic survey technology is difficult to obtain comprehensive surface deformation information, while InSAR can take advantage of its all-weather, all-day, large-area and high-density continuous monitoring of ground motion. Therefore, this study takes M_S6.7 earthquake as the research object to carry out the co-seismic deformation field extraction and fault static slip distribution inversion. Firstly, the co-seismic deformation field was obtained by using ascending and descending data of Sentinel-1A. The results indicate that the interferogram spatial decorrelation is more serious in the north side of fault, which is affected by the steep terrain. The fringes in the south side of fault were distributed as elliptical semi-petal shapes, and the fringes are smooth and clear. The northern and southern part of the fault was asymmetric: The interferogram fringes of the southern part were dense while fewer fringes were formed in the northern part, and the fringes were semi butterfly-shaped on the surface. The horizontal displacements dominated the co-seismic deformation in this event, with magnitude of 12cm in ascending and -21cm in descending. The deformation occurred mainly on the south wall of fault. Based on the right view imaging of Radar, the co-seismic deformation is consistent with the movement features of dextral strike-slip fault and the focal mechanism provided by USGS and GCMT. The cross section of aftershocks after precisely positioning showed that the dip angle of fault is larger above the depth of 15km, which is generally manifested as the shovel-like structure with the dominant tendency of southward dip. By conducting a comprehensive analysis of deformation feature and aftershocks profile, we proposed that the southwest-dipping Muji Fault is the seismogenic fault. Secondly, a large area of continuous deformation images obtained by InSAR technology contains millions of data points and there is a high correlation between them. In order to ensure the calculation efficiency and inversion feasibility in the inversion process, the quadtree sampling method was used to reduce the number of data points and the datasets were finally obtained that can be received by the inversion system on the basis of retaining the original details of the deformation field. The two tracks InSAR datasets which were down-sampled by quadtree method were used to constrain the inversion to retrieve the fault geometry parameters and slip distribution. The single-segment and two-segment static slip distribution on the fault plane based on uniform elastic half space model were constructed during inversion process. The F-test of fitting residuals based on single-segment and double-segment fault model show that the population variance of the two models was significantly different at the confidence level of 95%, and the variance of the double-fault model was smaller. Through the comprehensive analysis of predicted deformation field, residuals and F-test, it is considered that the simulated results of double fault model are better than that of the single, and the observation data can be better interpreted. The result shows that the simulated co-seismic deformation field and its corresponding observed values were consistent in morphology and magnitude, and the correlation between observed and modeled is up to 0.99. In addition, as can be seen from the spatial distribution and frequency histogram of residuals, the overall residual was not large, mainly concentrated in the range of -0.2~0.2cm with the characteristics of normal distribution. However, there were still some larger residuals on the near fault in ascending track, which may be related to the simplified model. There were two patches with significant slip distribution on each segment and the rupture basically reached the surface. The slip was mainly distributed along the downdip range of 0~20km and was about 50km along the fault strike. The rupture reached the surface and the peak slip of 0.7m was at the depth of 9km. The western segment is dominated by the right-lateral strike-slip and the eastern segment is dominated by the right-lateral strike-slip with slightly normal faulting. The seismic moment derived from inversion was 8.81×10¹⁸N·m, which is equivalent to M_W6.57. The average slip angle obtained by inversion is -175° in the west section and -160° in the east section. The synthetic analysis holds that the source characteristics of the M_S6.7 earthquake was characterized by dextral strike-slip with a slightly normal component, which was composed of two sub-seismic events. The western section was basically pure right-lateral strike-slip with a dip angle of 75°, while the eastern was characterized by dextral strike-slip with a small amount of normal component with a dip angle of 55°. The Aketao earthquake occurred on the northern Pamir salient and its tectonic deformation was mainly characterized by crustal shortening, strike-slip and internal extension of the frontal edge observed by GPS. Generally speaking, the Pamir salient was blocked by nearly east-west South Tian Shan in the process of strong northward pushing under the action of NE direction pushing of Indian plate, and “hard and hard collision” occurred between them. The eastern part of Pamir salient extruded eastward along the nearly NS trending Gongur extensional system, and at the same time rotated clockwise, which caused the nearly EW extension since the Late Quaternary. The Aketao earthquake is a tectonic event occurring at Gongur Shan extensional system, which shows that the pushing of the Indian plate in the NE direction is continuously strengthened, and also implies that the internal crustal deformation of the Pamir Plateau is still dominated by extension in EW direction, which is basically consistent with the present observation of GPS.

On November 18, 2017, a M_S6.9 earthquake struck Mainling County, Tibet, with a depth of 10km. The earthquake occurred at the eastern Himalaya syntaxis. The Namche Barwan moved northward relative to the Himalayan terrane and was subducted deeply beneath the Lhasa terrane, forming the eastern syntaxis after the collision of the Indian plate and Asian plates. Firstly, this paper uses the far and near field broadband seismic waveform for joint inversion (CAPJoint method)of the earthquake focal mechanism. Two groups of nodal planes are obtained after 1000 times Bootstrap test. The strike, dip and rake of the best solution are calculated to be 302°, 76° and 84° (the nodal plane Ⅰ)and 138°, 27° and 104° (the nodal plane Ⅱ), respectively. This event was captured by interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR)measurements from the Sentinel-1A radar satellite, which provide the opportunity to determine the fault plane, as well as the co-seismic slip distribution, and assess the seismic hazards. The overall trend of the deformation field revealed by InSAR is consistent with the GPS displacement field released by the Gan Wei-Jun's team. Geodesy (InSAR and GPS)observation of the earthquake deformation field shows the northeastern side of the epicenter uplifting and the southwestern side sinking. According to geodetic measurements and the thrust characteristics of fault deformation field, we speculate that the nodal plane Ⅰ is the true rupture plane. Secondly, based on the focal mechanism, we use InSAR data as the constraint to invert for the fine slip distribution on the fault plane. Our best model suggests that the seismogenic fault is a NW-SE striking thrust fault with a high angle. Combined with the slip distribution and aftershocks, we suggest that the earthquake is a high-angle thrust event, which is caused by the NE-dipping thrust beneath the Namche Barwa syntaxis subducted deeply beneath the Lhasa terrane.

In this paper, we processed and analyzed the Sentinel-1A data by "two-pass" method and acquired the surface deformation fields of Menyuan earthquake. The results show the deformation occurred mainly in the south wall of fault, where uplift deformation is dominant. The uplift deformation is significantly larger than the subsidence and the maximum uplift of ascending and descending in the LOS is 6cm, 8cm respectively. Meanwhile, based on the Okada model, we use the ascending and descending passes data as constraints to invert jointly the fault distribution and source parameters through constructing fault model of different dip directions. The optimum fault parameters are:The dip is 43°, the strike is 128°with the mean rake of 85°. The maximum slip is about 0.27m. The inverted seismic moment M₀ is 1.13×10¹⁸N·m, and the moment magnitude M_W is 5.9. The SW-dipping Minyue-Damaying Fault is possibly the seismogenic fault, based on the comprehensive analysis of the focal mechanisms, aftershocks relocation results and the regional tectonic background. The focus property is dominated by thrust movement with a small amount of dextral strike-slip component. The earthquake is the result of local stress adjustment nearby the Lenglongling Fault under the background of northeastward push and growth of Tibet Plateau.

In the past few years, the improved InSAR technology based on time series analyses to many SAR images has been used for measurement of interseismic deformation along active fault. In the paper, we first made a summary and introduction to the basic principle and technical characteristics of existing Time Series InSAR methods(such as Stacking, PSInSAR, SBAS). Then we presented a case study on the central segment of Haiyuan Fault in west China. We attempt to use the PS-InSAR(Permanent Scatter InSAR)technique to estimate the motion rate fields of this fault. We processed and analyzed 17 scenes of ENVISAT/ASAR images in descending orbits from 2003-2010 using the PS-InSAR method. The results reveal the whole movement pattern around the Haiyuan Fault and a remarkable velocity gradient of about 5mm/a across the central segment of the fault. The motion scenes are consistent with left-lateral strike-slip. On this basis, we make a discussion on some issues about observation of fault activity using Time Series InSAR methods, such as the changes of LOS deformation rates with fault strike and region width observed across a fault, fault reciprocity and motion style indicated by Time Series InSAR rate map and the relationship between the InSAR LOS deformation and the ones from other methods. All these studies will benefit the promotion of InSAR application in detection of tectonic movement.

Vertical coseisimic deformation near seismogenic fault is one of the most important parameters for understanding the fault behavior, especially for thrust or normal fault, since near field vertical deformation provides meaningful information for understanding the rupture characteristics of the seismogenic fault and focal mechanism. Taking Wenchuan thrust earthquake for an example, we interpolate GPS horizontal observed deformation using Biharmonic spline interpolation and derive them into east-westward or north-southward deformation field. We first use reliable GPS observed value to correct InSAR reference point and unify both GPS and InSAR coordinate frame. We then make a profile using InSAR data and compare it to that from GPS data and we find GPS and InSAR observation reference point has a 9.93cm difference in the hanging wall side, and around -11.49cm in the footwall. After correction, we obtain a continuous vertical deformation field of the Wenchuan earthquake by combined calculation of GPS and InSAR LOS deformation field. The results show that the vertical deformation of both hanging wall and foot wall of the fault decreases rapidly, with deformation greater than 30cm within 50km across the fault zone. The uneven distribution of the vertical deformation has some peak values at near fault, mainly distributed at the southern section(the town of Yingxiu), the middle(Beichuan)and the northern end(Qingchuan)of the seismogenic fault. These three segments have their own characteristics. The southern section of the fault has an obvious asymmetric feature, which exhibits dramatic uplift reaching 550cm on the hanging wall, with the maximum uplift area located in Yingxiu town to Lianshanping. The middle section shows a strong anti-symmetric feature, with one side uplifting and the other subsiding. The largest uplifting of the southern segment reaches around 255cm, located at the east of Chaping, and the largest subsiding is in Yongqing, reaching around -215cm. The vertical deformation of the northern section is relatively small and distributed symmetrically mainly in the north of Qingchuan, with the maximum uplift to be 120cm, locating in the northernmost of the seismogenic fault.

The distribution and characteristic of ground deformation is a key issue in geodesy,which brings insight into the geometry of the ruptured fault and seismic hazard assessment in the future in the surrounding areas. It also provides better constraint conditions for geophysical inversion. Compared with field research,satellite imagery regularly provides detailed and spatially comprehensive images and is a most valuable alternative especially for the study in remote areas. So,observing seismic rupture is urgent after earthquake. InSAR is useful for measuring ground displacement,but the technique has severe limitations that are mainly due to data decorrelation and signal saturation,and it does not generally provide measurements in the near-fault area where large displacements occur. In this paper,the sub-pixel correlation method and SPOT image are used to map the Wenchuan earthquake rupture and to identify the faults activated by the earthquake. A computation is introduced of the inverse projection matrices for which a rigorous resampling is proposed. Image registration and correlation is achieved with an iterative unbiased processor that estimates the phase plane in the Fourier domain for subpixel shift detection,then the earthquake deformation field is derived.The results indicate that the Wenchuan earthquake produced at least surface ruptures on two faults along the Longmenshan Fault,the main rupture named Beichuan-Yinxiu rupture zone(Longmenshan town-Gaochuan in this map)and the secondary rupture named Hanwang rupture zone.The former is characterized by dextral-slip thrusting with a horizontal displacement of 4～6m in average and a dextral-slip displacement of 1～3m near Gaochuan town.The latter is characterized by pure thrusting,with horizontal displacement 1～2m in average. There is no obvious ground rupture along Wenchuan-Maoxian Fault.The research indicates that sub-pixel correlation using optical image can be a powerful complement to differential radar interferometry,which can measure ground displacement near the fault zone.The study also shows that earthquake displacement fields can be calculated by remote sensing technology.The surface rupture can be traced and the meizoseismal area can be located by this method. Compared with field research,satellite imagery regularly provides detailed and spatially comprehensive images and is a most valuable alternative especially for the study in remote areas.

The interferometric baseline is a vital parameter in the InSAR technique,which determines the correlation between two repeat-pass images and imposes direct effect on the accuracy and reliability of the mapping result. If the baseline is not accurately estimated,the residual phases from the orbit and topography will be left in the expected phase of deformation leading to errors of the final result. In this work,we analyze the influences of the baseline on the reference phase and simulated topography phase,and present several methods of interferometric baseline estimation. Then we study the mapping process of the coseismic and post-seismic deformation of the 1997 Mani,Tibet M7.7 earthquake based on the 8-sence ERS2-SAR data and InSAR.Our attention is focused on comparison of interferograms under varied conditions for baseline estimations,such as rough orbit data,precise orbit data,frequency of interferometric fringes and control points on the ground. The result shows that when the baseline is estimated by rough orbit data,the yielded differential interferograms contain considerable phases of orbit residuals which make fringes dense and deformation enlarged. Thus we must use the precise orbit data for baseline estimation. Sometimes,however,the influence of the orbit cannot be removed completely even if we employ precise orbit data. In this case we should make further corrections,including removing superfluous fringes based on interferometric fringes frequency and baseline correction using the control points on the ground. With these improvements,the resultant coseismic displacement along the fault of the Mani earthquake is 4.5m. The post-seismic deformation by this event is concentrated in a narrow 10～20km-long zone around the fault. The accumulated fault slip 508 days after the main shock reaches at least 5.6m,which continues to grow with time. These analysis results are consistent with the field observations,meaning the improvement method presented in this paper is effective.

We used the radar data from the satellite ALOS/PALSAR of Japan and the differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar(D-InSAR)technology to derive the coseismic displacement field produced by the M_S 8.0 Wenchuan,Sichucan Province,China earthquake on 12 May 2008.Based on processing SAR data of 7 tracks and 112 scenes by the two-pass method,we obtained the interferometric map of 450km×450km covering the causative fault and determined the distribution range of incoherent zones.Proper phase unwrapping was performed to these tracks of continuous and discontinuous phases,yielding digital image of the interferometric displacement field,which is analyzed by displacement contours and the profile across the fault.The result shows that the Wenchuan M_S 8.0 earthquake has produced a vast area of surface deformation along the Yingxiu-Beichuan Fault,primarily concentrated in a near-field range of 100km wide on the both sides of the causative fault.In this field,the 250km-long and 15～35km wide incoherent zone nearby the fault has suffered the largest deformation with surface ruptures,of which the amount is too large to measure by InSAR.The secondary deformed areas are 70km wide on each side of the incoherent zone,where envelope-like fringes are clear,continuous and converging towards the fault,indicative of increasing gradient and amplitude of displacements which exhibit sunk north wall and uplifted south wall in sight line.With respect to the north and south edges of the data track,the maximum subsidence in the north wall is 110～120cm appearing northeast of Wenhcuan and Maoxian,and a big range of descents of 55～60cm occurred nearby the epicenter south of Lixian.The largest uplift 120～135cm in the south wall is present at the epicenter west of Yingxiu,north to Dujiangyan and around Beichuan.The maximum relative displacement between the north and south walls is up to 240cm that appears nearby the epicenter west of Yingxiu and north to Dujiangyan.In the far-field 70km away from the incoherent zones on the both sides of the causative fault,there are sparse fringes indicative of displacements less than 10cm.The profile across the fault indicates a highly variable gradient of deformation with profound heterogeneity near the fault and in its hanging wall,and a relatively uniform deformation in the foot wall.These differences of deformation can be attributed to complicated thrust faulting.Our analysis suggests that the fault rupture of the Wenchuan earthquake is a relative thrust between the two walls of the fault.

Using D-InSAR technology and by processing 7 track 56 scenes ALOS/PALSAR data,the surface deformation field of Wenchuan,Sichuan earthquake on May 12,2008 has been extracted.The deformation field covers a 500km?450km area and crosses Jinchuan-Shimian,Heishui-Leshan,Songpan-Pengshan,Nanping-Jianyang,and Kangxian-Chongqing regions,including the severely earthquake-hit areas,such as Lixian,Wenchuan,Maoxian,Beichuan,Qingchuan,and so on.The results show that the deformation field scope is large and the Sichuan basin has been deformed to different degrees.The incoherent belt near earthquake fault shows that the main earthquake surface rupture zone is on the Beichuan-Yingxiu Fault zone.The trackable surface rupture zone runs from the southwest of Yingxiu near the macroscopic epicenter to the north of Suhe in Qingchuan county,about 230km long.The southwest section of the seismogenic fault from Wenchuan to Maoxian shows an incoherent band width obviously larger than that of other incoherent parts,which is closely related to the surface rupture from Dujiangyan to Anxian on the Pengxian-Guanxian Fault(the Mountain Front Fault),and this surface rupture zone is about 70km long.Away from the seismic fault region,the northwest wall of the fault uplifted and the southeast wall subsided.However,both walls in the vicinity of the seismic fault uplifted locally,and along the fault the distribution is very uneven,showing strong segmentation,which indicates the fault is characterized by reverse thrust.The differences of epicentral positions and earthquake origin time given by Harvard,USGS,NEIC,CENC also show that the Wenchuan earthquake rupture process is a multi-point breakdown process.The largest relative deformation amounting to 260cm occurred in the epicentral region on the west of Yingxiu;if converted into vertical deformation,the relative vertical deformation of the two regions is up to 3.3m.In Ya'an and Emei mountain area,the settlement is about 35cm.In Chongqing and to its south,there is about 25cm small-scale uplift.