Monitoring earthquakes with satellites
Italian Scientists from INGV (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia)Â use the latest images from the European Space Agency to map recent fault displacement.
—> Risultati Preliminari SAR - First Results SAR (in italian)
Envisat ASAR interferogram (01 Feb 2009 / 12 April 2009)
(Courtesy of IREA-CNR)
a simple explanation of the concept here:
“While the fault and the earthquake epicenter are often deep below the earth’s surface, the ground above the fault moves a little too. This movement is very slight, but it is possible to measure it with high precision GPS instruments, or with satellites.”
credit: Ars Technica
the data are freely available at ESA:
“ESA makes freely available to the scientific community a dataset of SAR products (Envisat and ERS) corresponding to the earthquake of L’Aquila (Italy) which took place on 6 April 2009. The ESA package also includes data from Third Party missions, in particular Japanese ALOS data.”"
http://earth.esa.int/ew/earthquakes/Italy_April09/
you may also find this article interesting:
Can Satellites Aid Earthquake Predictions? - National Geographic
Popularity: 90% [?]
Cheers! Sandra. R.
