Haitian Earthquake of January 2010

On January 12, 2010 a M7.0 earthquake struck Haiti along the Enriquillo Fault. The epicenter was approximately 25 km from the major city of Port-au-Prince and caused extensive damage in the urban area. Using L-band PALSAR data acquired on September 3, 2009 and January 25, 2010 a differential interferogram was constructed by Neva Ridge which revealed the large ground motions associated with the quake.

Click here to see an overview image of the interferometric phase and an unwrapped version of it.

Click here to see the increased interferometric fringe visibility made possible by using a sophisticated filtering procedure.

This image presents the sensitivity of the L-band system by decreasing the wrapping interval of the interferometric phase from 50 cm of ground motion down to 1.5 cm of ground motion. (The L-band PALSAR system has an intrinsic wavelength of about 24 cm.) At 1.5 cm wrap intervals, the results become noisy. However, it shows increased sensitivity to the ground motion not visible at large wrap intervals.