Interferometric synthetic aperture radar–GPS integration: Interseismic strain accumulation across the Hunter Mountain fault in the eastern California shear zone

Abstract

The principal limitations of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) to measure subtle, long‐wavelength deformation are uncertainties associated with the satellite orbits. We propose a method to remove orbital phase errors from the InSAR data by integrating InSAR and continuous GPS time series. We model the along‐track variation of the baseline errors as second‐order polynomials and estimate the coefficients using the continuous GPS measurements. We apply this method to a 600 km long region encompassing the Basin and Range and the eastern California shear zone. Comparison of the corrected InSAR velocities with independent GPS data shows that this method removes the long‐wavelength InSAR errors. The InSAR data reveal a region of sharp variation in the line‐of‐sight velocity across the Hunter Mountain fault. We model the deformation as interseismic elastic strain accumulation across a strike‐slip fault. The modeling suggests a fault slip rate of 4.9 ± 0.8 mm/yr and a locking depth of 2 ± 0.4 km. The shallow locking depth suggests that the Hunter Mountain fault is a transfer fault between low angle normal faults in the area.