SENTINEL-1 PROCESSING AND ANALYSIS TO ESTIMATE GROUND DISPLACEMENT AND IDENTIFY ACTIVATION FAULTS, CASE STUDY OF THE 2017 Mw 7.3 EARTHQUAKE, NEAR THE IRAQ-IRAN BORDER

Abstract

Earthquakes are significant natural geohazards that threaten life and property. Iraq lies in a seismically active region, and most earthquakes result from the collision of the Eurasian- Arabian plates. On Nov. 12, 2017, an earthquake with 7.3 MW shook a large area of the Zagros Belt at the Iran-Iraq border. This work aims to use the InSAR technique for emphasis on the processing and analysis of Sentinel-1 data pre and post-earthquake supported by field, geological and tectonic information to map the ground deformation and fault activity caused by the Nov.12 earthquake. The case study involves a region located at the Iraq-Iran political boundaries. The results reveal that InSAR is a powerful tool to detect ground displacement and allow positioning faults. The interferogram results show that deformation extends to an area ~ 6300 km 2 and 7000 km 2 , with a maximum line-of-sight horizontal displacement ~87 cm and ~55 cm, vertical displacement ~121 cm uplifting and ~59 cm subsidence for ascending and descending data respectively, While pre-earthquake results show clearly neither displacement nor deformation took place. According to InSAR analysis, displacement direction, fault position detection, aftershock distribution, and the general geometric fault context, the blind back-thrust fault SW-dipping steeply occurred on the Zagros Front Fault was interpreted, in addition to new minor faults ruptured on the surface and displacement on old faults were detected. Many faults derived from the geological map coincide with the results of interferometric phase maps. Most recentlydiscovered faults appear to be related to the Nov.12 earthquake.

Spatial Analysis of Relative Humidity and Its Effect on Baghdad City for The Years 2008, 2013 and 2018

“…The process of extracting urban areas (Land Use) from the study area may not give accurate results to know the effect of relative humidity on human activities in a scientific way, where the search for a feature is so clear to see this effect [26] and [27]. Therefore, the NDI was used to extract the built-up areas in the study area from Landsat 5 and 8 images [28], where we observe that it gives more accurate results than other indexes as shown in the equation, Figures 7 and 8 and, see table 3 [29].…”

Investigation of Earthquake Deformation Detectability using Sentinel-1 Interferometric Data

“…With the development of the Sentinel-1 SAR satellite, the application of InSAR for natural hazard monitoring and earthquake studies has opened new perspectives. The Sentinel-1 data has been successfully applied for many studies [8] [10] [20] [21].…”

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Historically, the Kyrgyz Republic and neighboring countries have experienced numerous strong earthquakes. Our research focused on the investigation of surface deformations caused by 5 earthquake events which had occurred during -2017 technique was applied for the Sentinel-1 Interferometric data acquired before and after earthquake events. The pairs of images were processed using the SNAP software to produce a coseismic interferogram, coherence and displacement maps.

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