Satellite Data Look Behind The Scenes Of Deadly Earthquake

Using satellite radar data and GPS measurements, Chinese researchers have explained the exceptional geological events leading to the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake that killed nearly 90,000 people in China’s Sichuan Province.

To learn this, Sun and Prof. Zhengkang Shen of IGCEA and Peking University’s Department of Geophysics, and collaborators acquired two kinds of satellite radar data: Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) data in C-band from ESA’s Envisat satellite and Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) data from Japan’s ALOS satellite.

“This is perhaps the very first time people have seen the complete deformation field produced by an earthquake on such a large scale,” Sun said. Read more at www.sciencedaily.com