GEO5110 - Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar

Course Description

This course focuses on providing application-oriented forum on InSAR for geoscientists. Principles of InSAR, DInSAR, timeSAR are introduced through hands-on lab work on measuring earthquake deformation, volcanic unrest, land subsidence due to extraction of groundwater, oil, gas, and coal mining using both commercial and open-source software tools.

Course Outline

• Day 1: Principles of Imaging Radar
  • Basic SAR concepts: phase, amplitude, wavelength, speckle
  • SAR principles
  • InSAR data sources
  • SAR Basic Data processing
• Day 2:  InSAR/DInSAR
  • InSAR theory
  • InSAR processing chain
  • DEM generation
  • DInSAR configuration
  • DInSAR processing chain
  • Earthquake deformation mapping
  • InSAR w/ LiDAR for object height measurement
• Day 3: timeSAR and Applications
  • timeSAR
  • Application1: Monitoring land subsidence from groundwater extraction in Las Vegas
  • Application2: land subsidence monitoring due to coal mining
  • Measuring surface motion with SAR and optical pixel tracking
• Day 4 & 5: Student Projects & Exercises and Discussions
  • Each of the following real world applications are practiced in the classroom and results are discussed with published papers of the case studies.
    • InSAR of St Louis
    • DInSAR mapping of Bam, Iran erthquake, 2003-2004
    • Haiti Earthquake study using PALSAR data

Learner Outcomes

• Be able to search and order appropriate InSAR data for their study
• Be familiar with InSAR principles, and InSAR/DInSAR data processing and interpretation.
• Be familiar with advanced level of geosciences applications of SAR data including DEM generation, earthquake deformation mapping, building sinking, land subsidence due to oil and gas exploration, and tree height estimation.

Duration