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IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING LETTERS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2011
X-, C-, and L-Band DInSAR Investigation of the
April 6, 2009, Abruzzi Earthquake
Salvatore Stramondo, Member, IEEE, Marco Chini, Member, IEEE,
Christian Bignami, Stefano Salvi, and Simone Atzori
Abstract—This letter compares the coseismic deformation maps
obtained from different synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors
using the well-known differential SAR interferometry technique.
In particular, four deformation maps have been obtained from X-,
C-, and L-band SAR sensors onboard COSMO-SkyMed, Envisat,
and ALOS satellite missions correspondingly. The test case is the
April 6, 2009, earthquake (Mw = 6.3). This seismic event struck
a densely populated region of the Apennines and was felt all
over Central Italy. The SAR data set is rather inhomogeneous,
since it includes interferograms with three different wavelengths,
four acquisition geometries, different spatial resolutions, variable
temporal and spatial baselines, and differently emphasized signal
noise. However, we find that the detected displacements are highly
comparable. The outcome of this work is that, even though such
differences have an impact on the properties of the interferograms,
the displacements can be measured with an overall discrepancy of
about half the value of the shortest wavelength (COSMO-SkyMed)
data set.
Index Terms—Abruzzi earthquake, differential interferometry,
synthetic aperture radar (SAR).
I. I NTRODUCTION
O N APRIL 6, 2009, at 01:32 GMT, an Mw = 6.3 earth-
quake hit a wide portion of the Abruzzi region in Central
Italy, classified among the areas with higher seismic hazard in
Italy [1]. The epicenter was located 4 km southwest of the city
of L’Aquila, whereas the highest damages occurred about 8 km
to the southeast. In L’Aquila and in the neighboring villages,
the earthquake caused collapse or irreparable damage to over
15 000 buildings, killing 308 people and causing the relocation
of over 65 000.
During the next week, the main shock was followed by
seven major aftershocks (Mw > 5), and over 6000 smaller
events occurred in the next few months in an area extended
northwest–southeast for about 35 km [2]. The quickly de-
termined seismic moment tensor solutions indicated that the
source could be a northwest–southeast striking normal fault, in
agreement with the active tectonics of the Apennine belt [3].
In the earthquake aftermath, attempts to determine the actual
location of the seismic source were frustrated by the lack of
evident surface faulting and by the puzzling spatial separation
Manuscript received February 16, 2010; revised March 29, 2010 and
April 13, 2010; accepted May 14, 2010. Date of publication July 1, 2010.
This work was supported in part by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica
e Vulcanologia and in part by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) under the
SIGRIS Project.
S. Stramondo, M. Chini, C. Bignami, S. Salvi and S. Atzori are with Istituto
Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, 00143 Rome, Italy.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LGRS.2010.2051015
1545-598X/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
Copyright (c) 2010 IEEE. Personal use is permitted. For any other purposes, Permission must be obtained from the IEEE by emailing pubs-permissions@ieee.org.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Marco Chini. Downloaded on July 01,2010 at 16:21:42 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
49
among the main shock location, the highest damage areas, and
the aftershock seismicity patterns.
The clear identification of the fault was obtained only six
days after, when the first differential synthetic aperture radar
(SAR) interferometry (DInSAR) interferograms yielded a high-
resolution map of the coseismic deformation which constrained
accurate models of the dislocation [4].
In fact, soon after the main shock, the entire “constellation”
of SAR and optical satellites was activated to cover the epi-
central region. The first SAR data came, with a delay of few
hours only, from Radarsat, but unfortunately, the interferogram
was too noisy to give any useful information [5]. The first us-
able interferograms were obtained from Envisat and COSMO-
SkyMed data six days later (on April 12). This was, in fact, the
first time in which an X-band interferogram showed the com-
plete surface displacement field of an earthquake. COSMO-
SkyMed interferometry had been proved earlier, for the 2008
Sichuan (China) earthquake, but with no practical use, due to
the limited coverage of the area [6].
Further SAR data came in the following days, from COSMO-
SkyMed, ENVISAT, and ALOS, allowing an unprecedented
coverage of a coseismic displacement field in terms of different
line of sights (LOS), ground resolutions, and frequency bands
of the imaging sensors.
The most important results obtained from SAR data were
the fast identification and characterization of the earthquake
source, i.e. the Paganica fault, indeed previously overlooked as
a possible source of a large earthquake [4]. The results demon-
strated the potential of short-revisiting-time SAR imagery as a
monitoring tool for the management of seismic crises.
To further exploit this issue, here, we present the comparison
of the results from X-, C-, and L-band SAR interferometry
for the investigation of the surface displacement field of the
L’Aquila earthquake. In particular, we highlight the specific
characteristics of each frequency band in terms of accuracy,
error noise, and decorrelation and focus on the conditions that
allow considering indifferently the use of one or other sensor.
This letter is organized as follows: Section II illustrates
the data set available in this study and its characteristics.
Section III describes the comparisons between different sensors
and highlights the results. Section IV closes with conclusions.
II. SAR DATA S ET AT X-, C-, AND L-BAND
A. X-Band Interferometry: COSMO-SkyMed
COSMO-SkyMed is a constellation of four satellites (three
already in orbit), developed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI)
to provide fast meter-level-resolution all-weather imagery
for disaster management [7], [8]. All the COSMO-SkyMed
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50
satellites are equipped with a flexible multimode X-band SAR
(SAR2000), with right- and left-looking imaging capabilities,
incidence angle range of 20◦ –60◦ , and 12-h minimum revisit
time (at full constellation). Due to the high spatial resolution
(∼3 m in the stripmap mode), the critical baseline, which is
inversely related with the range resolution, is longer than that
for ERS and Envisat systems. Indeed, at 40◦ look angle, it is
∼2600 m. More precisely, the critical baseline is the minimum
value for which the spatial correlation is zero [9], and it occurs
when the backscattered signal between two interferometric
passes becomes completely uncorrelated for each pixel.
On April 6, following the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica
e Vulcanologia alert for a large earthquake in Abruzzi, the
Italian Civil Protection Department requested ASI to do image
acquisitions in crisis mode, using stripmap (40-km swath and
3-m ground resolution) and spotlight (10-km swath and 1-m
resolution) modes. In the next 20 days, more than 100 images
were acquired over the area, with many different geometries
and look angles.
We applied DInSAR to the April 4 and April 12 stripmap
pair. The interferogram spatial resolution was degraded to 20 m
since an 8 × 8 multilook processing was applied, to enhance the
signal-to-noise ratio. The topographic-phase component was
removed using a 5-m-geometric-resolution digital terrain model
(DTM), with a vertical accuracy of 1 m. The DTM had been
obtained by an airborne interferometry SAR campaign [10].
The estimated spatial baseline is quite long (about 435 m) but
still able to maintain an overall good coherence. The resulting
interferogram shows a northwest–southeast concentric fringe
pattern that is composed of 12 fringes, with each corresponding
to a range increment of 1.5 cm going from the outer to the
inner fringes. The maximum ground displacement measured
along the satellite LOS (i.e. ∼ 36◦ from nadir) reaches 18 cm
at midway from L’Aquila and Fossa villages [Fig. 1(a)]. The
surface movement is, as expected, from a southwest dipping
normal faulting mechanism.
B. C-Band Interferometry: Envisat
The Envisat Advanced SAR sensor is a C-band polarimetric
system operational since 2002. We exploited a data set of
images in ERS-like mode provided by the European Space
Agency (ESA) and acquired along ascending and descending
paths. The first postseismic Envisat image (dated April 12,
2009) was acquired from a descending orbit and matched with
a preseismic image acquired on April 27, 2008, providing a
one-year coseismic interferogram, hereafter named April-12
[Fig. 1(b)]. Three days later, on April 15, an Envisat ascending
image was acquired and processed with the image acquired on
March 11, 2009, to obtain a further interferogram, hereafter
named April-15 [Fig. 1(c)].
The high-resolution DTM mentioned before was also used to
remove the topographic phase from the Envisat interferograms,
and a multilooking operation (2 × 10 range and azimuth pixels,
respectively) was adopted, leading to a 40 × 40 m degraded
spatial resolution.
Notwithstanding the longer temporal baseline, the descend-
ing interferogram maintains a better coherence than the 35-day
ascending one. Indeed, both interferograms use a pair of images
acquired in the same season, with quite similar backscattering
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IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING LETTERS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2011
conditions; thus, the higher coherence of April-12 is justified
by the shorter spatial baseline (41 m in April-12 and 237 m in
April-15). We note, as a first comparison, that the similarity
between the bean-shaped concentric fringe pattern from the
ascending and descending interferograms suggests that the
vertical component of the detected movement is prevailing, in
agreement with the normal faulting mechanism.
The spatial and temporal decorrelations have a relevant im-
pact on the detected LOS displacement field. Indeed, in the
April-15 interferogram, one or more fringes are missing being
too noisy. In this interferogram, we count nine fringes, for a
maximum displacement of ∼23 cm, while ten fringes (28 cm)
can be outlined in the one from April 12.
C. L-Band Interferometry: ALOS
The L-band ALOS PALSAR instrument, due to its longer
wavelength (23.6 cm), has the advantage of a deeper penetration
of vegetated areas that contributes to reduce the temporal
decorrelation. Moreover, its higher spatial resolution leads to
an increase of the critical spatial baseline. For example, for a
fine beam single-polarization (FBS) data pair, with a spatial
resolution of about 9 m/pixel and an average sight angle of
38◦ , the critical spatial baseline exceeds 13 000 m. This allows
increasing the number of suitable interferometric pairs for
DInSAR applications. The capabilities of ALOS PALSAR have
already been proved applying DInSAR in a very impervious
region such as the 2008 Sichuan (China) earthquake epicentral
area [11], [12].
We have analyzed the coseismic surface deformation in the
L’Aquila area using a multipolarization interferometric pair:
the preseismic image (July 20, 2008) is a fine beam double-
polarization (FBD) one, while the postseismic one is an FBS
image (April 22, 2009). Both images have been acquired
from ascending orbits, with a perpendicular spatial baseline of
182 m. The temporal baseline is about nine months. Due to
the different acquisition modes, the data have different spatial
resolutions; to achieve the same spatial resolution of the FBS
image, the FBD one has been oversampled. It is worth noting
that the critical baseline for the FBD–FBS interferogram is
equal to 2/3 of an FBS–FBS one.
The resulting FBD–FBS interferogram is shown in Fig. 1(d).
Two clear fringes, plus a fraction of a third one, come out and
correspond to 24–26 cm of LOS displacement, in agreement
with the C-band interferograms.
III. DInSAR DATA C OMPARISON AND R ESULTS
In the previous section, we have described four interfero-
grams: three from the ascending path (each from a different
band) and one from the descending orbit. In Fig. 2, we summa-
rize their temporal baselines, while in Table I, we report their
characteristics.
To measure the actual surface deformation, we applied to
the four interferograms a phase unwrapping procedure based
on the region growing algorithm [13]. Such an algorithm
handles noisy interferograms without provoking any significant
distortion to the outcoming relative displacements. In order to
compare the results, we geocoded the four displacement maps
in a common geographical system (UTM–WGS-84) using the
5-m DTM, with a resulting geometric resolution of 80 m.
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STRAMONDO et al.: INVESTIGATION OF THE APRIL 6 ABRUZZI EARTHQUAKE 51

Fig. 1. Four differential wrapped interferograms: (a) COSMO-SkyMed; (b) Envisat descending; (c) Envisat ascending; (d) ALOS. The interferograms have been
processed with the SARscape software. The study area is the red square in the top right inset.

descending orbits, to a common geometry, i.e. the COSMO-

Fig. 2. Time line of the acquisition of the entire SAR data set used in this work.
TABLE I
L IST OF I NTERFEROGRAMS AND D ETAILS
The data set is particularly inhomogeneous in terms of fre-
quency bands, spatial resolution, and spatial coverage of each
interferogram; thus, a postprocessing analysis was applied to
provide a reliable comparison among the data. We first repro-
jected the entire data set of interferograms, along ascending and
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SkyMed stripmap LOS. It is worth noting that, in order to
project LOS displacements from an Envisat descending pair,
we neglected the planar displacement components and assumed
that only vertical movements occurred. This latter assumption is
justified from seismological outcomes. The Regional Centroid
Moment Tensor solution states that the main shock on April 6 is
a pure normal faulting mechanism on a high dip (53◦ ) fault [3].
Moreover, although the four interferograms contain the effect
of the Mw = 5.5 April 7 aftershock, whose mechanism shows
a pronounced strike-slip component, the large depth of the event
(∼20 km) caused only negligible surface effects [14].
After reprojection, we selected the common part of the
displacement patterns of all interferograms. For this purpose,
a selection mask was applied to the entire stack of data, and
only those pixels in each interferogram whose coherence degree
exceeds a certain threshold (0.6) were retained. The threshold
value can be changed depending on the selected processing
parameters such as multilooking filtering windows and so
on. Therefore, the following cross-band comparison concerned
only those pixels which were selected by high coherence in the
whole set of interferograms, resulting in 32 161 pixels.
In order to correctly manage unwrapped interferograms,
some remarks are appropriate. The phase unwrapping algorithm
provides a solution modeling the propagation of the signal with-
in each image. Therefore, although we use the same approach, it
can be prone to phase jumps due to coherence falls. This might
originate some artifacts in the displacement patterns which will
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52
Fig. 3. Frequency graphs of selected pixels for each image, where the total
number of pixels is 32 161.
affect the selection of the samples to be used. It is worth noting
that one or more cycle slips are a relevant issue whenever the
topic is the correct retrieval of the deformation field. To reduce
the risk of dealing with measures affected by phase artifacts, we
then applied the aforementioned selection criterion.
The following analysis is preparatory to the COSMO-
SkyMed, ALOS, and Envisat data comparison. In particular,
we assess two major issues: the level of correlation of the
displacement patterns and the impact of error sources.
The frequency distributions of the selected pixels for each
interferogram are shown in Fig. 3. The graphs show very
similar trends, but some spurious peaks are present. This means
that, although three different frequencies (X-, C-, and L-bands)
have been used and notwithstanding the different geometries
of the images, the overall retrieved displacements are strongly
comparable and a large number of pixels measure very similar
values. In order to assess the similarity of the distributions, the
correlation index between displacement values of two different
acquisitions has been computed. In particular, by computing
the Pearson correlation coefficient ρ between different couples
of unwrapped interferograms, we obtain 0.978 for COSMO-
SkyMed versus ALOS and 0.945 for COSMO-SkyMed versus
Envisat ascending data. As expected, COSMO-SkyMed ver-
sus Envisat descending acquisitions are less correlated (0.776)
probably due to the different paths (one along ascending and
one along descending orbits) and geometries, and it is also
evident in the frequency distribution in Fig. 3. Indeed, the
descending acquisition is the only one which detects a small
uplift (about 6 cm) due to the favorable orientation of the
normal fault with respect to the Envisat descending LOS. The
important role of the acquisition geometries is confirmed by
the highest correlation value of the COSMO-SkyMed versus
ALOS pair, likely due to the very close average incidence
angles (36◦ for COSMO-SkyMed and 38◦ for ALOS).
The further analysis of this letter is addressed to investigate
the capability of each of the three SAR sensors to provide
comparable measures of the surface displacement pattern.
One of the larger sources of phase errors in SAR signals
is the atmospheric phase delay, which is composed by two
main contributes, tropospheric and ionospheric. The former
one can be considered almost constant for all three bands (X,
C, and L). Indeed, at microwave frequencies, the variability
of the water vapor content does not affect the refractivity
index, but hydrometeors (rain and ice) can contribute to index
variations at the higher frequencies (X-band could be affected)
[15]. While the propagation delay through the ionosphere is
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IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING LETTERS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2011
TABLE II
DATA C OMPARISON : D ETAILS
inversely proportional to the square of the radar frequency in
the microwave part of the spectrum, thus the L-band could
be more affected, particularly near the geomagnetic equator
and poles [16]. The estimation of the atmospheric phase is
only possible in time-series interferometry, exploiting a large
number of interferograms of the same area [17]; therefore, such
a contribution has not been removed in this study.
A second source of phase error is originated by the topo-
graphic phase whenever it is not well removed due to the
complexity and high slope of the reliefs. Aiming at estimating
such errors, we adopted the equation from Sandwell et al. [18]
who investigated the ratio of the LOS error versus the topo-
graphic error as a function of the perpendicular baseline and the
sight angle. In that study, the digital elevation model is a 30-m
posting with about 10-m height accuracy. It is worth noting
that we expect the radar noise level of ALOS PALSAR in FBS
mode to be theoretically four times greater than Envisat and
eight times greater than COSMO-SkyMed. Sandwell et al. [18]
demonstrated that the error noise of ALOS is 1.5 times worse
than ERS, claiming that the LOS range precision is relatively
independent of the radar mode. Scaling for the perpendicular
baselines, we have verified that the error noise in the COSMO-
SkyMed interferogram is 2.5 times higher than that in our
ALOS FBS–FBD image pair, while it results 1.5 times larger
than that in the Envisat ascending one. As already stated, the
result is heavily constrained by the baselines whose variability
range is quite large for the data used in this work. Indeed, the
perpendicular baselines range from 41 m in the case of the
Envisat descending interferogram up to 435 m for the COSMO-
SkyMed interferogram. Consequently, the impact of error noise
in each of the available data is different, and this has to be
considered in our analysis.
The previous analysis on the three-band DInSAR interfero-
grams has allowed fixing two main issues: the large correlation
of the displacement patterns and the impact of error noise.
To complete the data analysis, we have then compared the
displacement from our reference, i.e. the COSMO-SkyMed
interferogram, with ALOS, Envisat ascending, and Envisat
descending interferograms. We have computed the per-pixel
difference of COSMO-SkyMed with respect to each one of the
other interferograms, estimating the mean μ and the standard
deviation σ of the residuals. The numerical results are summa-
rized in Table II, while in Fig. 4, the distribution of the displace-
ment differences is shown. As it simply comes out, the results
show that, although there is a large wavelength difference,
COSMO-SkyMed and ALOS measure the displacements with
an overall discrepancy of about half of the COSMO-SkyMed
wavelength. Moreover, if we consider COSMO-SkyMed as
our reference data, ALOS seems to slightly underestimate the
ground displacement. On the other hand, the average difference
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STRAMONDO et al.: INVESTIGATION OF THE APRIL 6 ABRUZZI EARTHQUAKE
Fig. 4. Map of the per-pixel difference of the displacement values. COSMO-SkyMed has been compared to each of the other data after a postprocessing, aiming
at projecting the data onto COSMO-SkyMed geometry.
of COSMO-SkyMed versus Envisat (either ascending or
descending pairs) is close to zero (less than 4 mm) although it
appears more scattered (≈ 34 < σ <≈ 45 mm). The difference
of COSMO-SkyMed versus Envisat descending should theo-
retically be less affected by error noise for the short spatial
baseline (41 m), but it is also the only cross-path (ascending
versus descending) comparison.
IV. C ONCLUSION
We have investigated the April 6, 2009, earthquake by a
three-band interferometric data set. We focused our study on
the analysis of the capabilities and the comparison of X-, C-,
and L-band DInSAR for the retrieval of surface movements.
It comes out that, whatever the characteristics of the SAR
sensor used, such as wavelength, orbit path, incidence angle,
and geometric resolution, the resulting deformation maps from
a normal fault earthquake are comparable and reliable with an
overall accuracy better than 1.4 cm, which corresponds to half
of the COSMO-SkyMed wavelength.
It has also been demonstrated how the used sensors, which
are fully representative of the suitable SAR frequencies and
spatial resolutions from satellite missions, have been able to
provide consistent measurements, from different sight angle
and orbital paths, of the ground deformation pattern due to the
L’Aquila earthquake. We stress that our results are valid for
ground deformations with a predominant vertical component.
From an applicative perspective, an effective improvement
of a DInSAR observation strategy for coseismic displacements
during seismic sequences would be the opportunity to narrow
the temporal sampling of the deformation, using all available
SAR data independently on the wavelengths. Indeed, this is
particularly important during long seismic sequences, to in-
vestigate the incremental ground deformations caused by large
magnitude aftershocks.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
ASI provided the COSMO-SkyMed data. ESA made avail-
able the Envisat and ALOS data (the latter copyright of the
Japanese Space Agency—JAXA).
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