Postseismic deformation following the 2010 Haiti earthquake: Groundwater flow in response to a sudden uplift

Shimon Wdowinski¹⁾ and Sang-Hoon Hong^1,2)
1)Division of Marine Geology and Geophysics, University of Miami, Miami, FL
²⁾Satellite Data Application Department, Korea Aerospace Research Institute, Republic of Korea

The 2010, M=7.0 Haiti earthquake was one of the worst natural disasters of the past century with more than 230,000 fatalities. The earthquake ruptured a 40 km long fault and had a seismic moment of 5.44 x 1026 dyne cm. A magnitude 7 earthquake typically displaces the Earth's crust by 3-5 meters and deforms the crust over a wide area along the fault. It also induces large transient displacements, termed postseismic deformation. In this research project we used Synthetic Aperture Radar observations acquired by the German TerraSAR-X (TSX) and the Japanese ALOS satellites to detect postseismic deformation induced by the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The advantages of using TSX data are their very high spatial resolution (1-5 meters) and short repeat time (11 days). However, the satellite acquires data over a narrow swath (30 km) and its X-band signal (3 cm wavelength) degrades within short time, except over urban areas. The ALOS satellite uses L-band (24 cm wavelength) radar, which maintains interferometric coherence over long time periods (months and years) even over vegetated areas. However the repeat orbit of ALOS is 45 days, which provides limited temporal resolution.