Fault creep along the southern San Andreas from interferometric synthetic aperture radar, permanent scatterers, and stacking

[1] Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) provides a practical means of mapping creep along major strike-slip faults. The small amplitude of the creep signal (<10 mm/yr), combined with its short wavelength, makes it difficult to extract from long time span interferograms, especially in agricultural or heavily vegetated areas. We utilize two approaches to extract the fault creep signal from 37 ERS SAR images along the southern San Andreas Fault. First, amplitude stacking is utilized to identify permanent scatterers, which are then used to weight the interferogram prior to spatial filtering. This weighting improves correlation and also provides a mask for poorly correlated areas. Second, the unwrapped phase is stacked to reduce tropospheric and other short-wavelength noise. This combined processing enables us to recover the near-field (∼200 m) slip signal across the fault due to shallow creep. Displacement maps from 60 interferograms reveal a diffuse secular strain buildup, punctuated by localized interseismic creep of 4–6 mm/yr line of sight (LOS, 12–18 mm/yr horizontal). With the exception of Durmid Hill, this entire segment of the southern San Andreas experienced right-lateral triggered slip of up to 10 cm during the 3.5-year period spanning the 1992 Landers earthquake. The deformation change following the 1999 Hector Mine earthquake was much smaller (<1 cm) and broader than for the Landers event. Profiles across the fault during the interseismic phase show peak-to-trough amplitude ranging from 15 to 25 mm/yr (horizontal component) and the minimum misfit models show a range of creeping/locking depth values that fit the data.