Spatially Heterogeneous Land Surface Deformation Data Fusion Method Based on an Enhanced Spatio-Temporal Random Effect Model

Abstract

The spatio-temporal random effect (STRE) model, a type of spatio-temporal Kalman filter model, can be used for the fusion of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data to generate high spatio-temporal resolution deformation series, assuming that the land deformation is spatially homogeneous in the monitoring area. However, when there are multiple deformation sources in the monitoring area, complex spatial heterogeneity will appear. To improve the fusion accuracy, we propose an enhanced STRE fusion method (eSTRE) by taking spatial heterogeneity into consideration. This new method integrates the spatial heterogeneity constraints in the STRE model by constructing extra-constrained spatial bases for the heterogeneous area. The effectiveness of this method is verified by using simulated data and real land surface deformation data. The results show that eSTRE can reduce the root mean square (RMS) of InSAR interpolation results by 14% and 23% on average for a simulation experiment and Los Angeles experiment, respectively, indicating that the new proposed method (eSTRE) is substantially better than the previous STRE fusion model.