Coseismic Deformation of 2009 L'Aquila, Italy Earthquake Derived from Ascending and Descending ENVISAT/ASAR Images

The Mw6.3 L'Aquila earthquake (in central Italy) occurred on 6 April 2009 and caused ground displacements. In order to study this earthquake mechanism, three tracks(track 079, 129, 401) ENVISAT/ASAR images, which include ascending and descending data, were used to derive different line of sight directions coseismic deformation based on the technique of two pass differential interferometric synthetic aperture rada (D-InSAR). The coseismic deformation results are quite consistent with the GPS measurements, and the RMSs (root mean squre) in LOS between GPS and coseismic deformation of three tracks are 15mm, 26mm, 20mm respectively. This demonstrates that the D-InSAR LOS deformation accuracy can reach centimeter's level here. These coseismic deformations show that the earthquake fault is right lateral fault, the strike is NW-ES direction, and the largest LOS deformations of the three tracks are -268mm, -233mm, -255mm respectively.