22 May, 2012
A paper written by Guangcai Feng and Sigurjón Jónsson has been published in Geophysical Research Letters. The title is "Shortcomings of InSAR for studying megathurst earthquakes: the case of the Mw9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake". In this study, Dr. Feng used Envisat and ALOS InSAR data to estimate the fault slip of the large Tohoku-Oki earthquake and compered the results with slip estimations from GPS and offshore GPS/acoustic measurements. The results show that the usefulness of InSAR for studying very large subduction earthquakes is limited when a dense continuous GPS networks exist, as the GPS stations more accurately capture the spatially large and smooth deformation signal.