Data Acquisition for the WInSAR Consortium

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

0216975 Jordan Funds from this grant will support the purchase of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from agents of the European Space Agency. The SAR imagery will be archived at computational facilities of the Western North America InSAR (WInSAR) Consortium. SAR imagery supports tectonic, volcanological, and hydrologic research by consortium members through interferometric analysis of temporally separated SAR pairs to detect to spatially continuous, subtle (mm to cm) deformation of the earth's surface over large baselines (100s of km). As the U. S. does not currently have a satellite borne SAR sensor that provides global coverage while Western Europe, Canada and Japan do, WInSAR negotiated SAR data buys from ESA address a national deficiency in the short-term and create a cost-effective means of providing SAR imagery to the nation's geoscientists. The NSF Division of Earth Sciences, the USGS and NASA co-support WinSAR data buys. ***