Analysis of the resolution of interferometric synthetic aperture radar data inversion and application of the inversion residual to identify shallow hazards

Abstract

We have conducted a study to investigate the sensitivity of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurement to subsurface strain change and developed an inversion framework to use InSAR data for subsurface surveillance. Using the spatial domain and spatial-frequency-domain analysis, we have determined that the earth behaves as a low-pass filter in its transmission of deformation from the subsurface to the earth’s surface. As a result of this low-pass filtering effect of the earth, the horizontal resolution of InSAR images is roughly equal to the depth of the targeted activity. Therefore, the goal of InSAR data inversion is to recover high-spatial-frequency subsurface strains from InSAR measurements. Because changes in the reservoir tend to have a lower spatial-frequency InSAR signature, high-spatial-frequency surface displacement can be associated with shallow overburden activities. Based on these insights, we have developed an inversion workflow that takes into account the overburden and reservoir strain changes and applied it to an InSAR data set from the San Joaquin Valley. Our results indicate that an inversion model that only considers strain changes in the reservoir produces large spatially localized inversion residuals in locations with known shallow overburden activity. A residual analysis reveals that the high-spatial-frequency anomalies in InSAR data can be used to identify shallow activities.