OBSERVED DEFORMATION SIGNALS AT ACTIVE VOLCANOES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN BY INSAR

Satellite-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) has developed into a well-known technique to gauge the status of active volcanoes. The InSAR technique can detect the ascent of magma to shallow levels of the volcanic plumbing system because new arriving magma pressurizes the system, which is likely associated with the inflation of the volcanic edifice and the surroundings. Although the potential of InSAR to detect magma migration is well known, the principal limitation was that only for few volcanoes frequent observations were acquired.

The ALOS-1 satellite of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) acquired a global L-band data set of 15-20 acquisitions during 2006-2011, while the TerraSAR-X satellite of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has been acquiring a global X-band data set since 2008. We attempt to use ALOS-1 and TerraSAR-X data to generate line-of-sight InSAR time series using the Small Baseline Subset Algorithm (SBAS) method for a ground deformation survey of Latin America and the Caribbean. We present time-dependent ground deformation data for volcanoes in Ecuador, Colombia, Montserrat, and Dominica, and interpret the observations in terms of the dynamics of the volcanic systems.