Persistent Scatterers InSAR to detect ground deformation over Rio-Antirio area (Western Greece) for the period 1992-2000

The aim of this paper is to detect ground deformation detection in the Rio-Antirio area (Western Greece), between 1992 and 2000. The construction of Rio-Antirio bridge, commenced in year 2000 and completed in 2004 when its operation was launched, demands the study of the historic deformation of the broader area. The Interferometric Point Target Analysis (IPTA) was applied using a dataset of 42 ERS-1 and 2 scenes. Two separate IPTA processing were performed using different reference points for Rio and Antirio respectively. It would not be possible to unwrap the entire scenes using a single reference point because of the presence of the sea water mass between Rio and Antirio. The majority of the point targets show subsidence for the area of Rio ranging between -1.8 mm/year and -6.2 mm/year and for the Antirio area stability or subsidence rates of less than 2 mm/year. Additionally, the deformation history for a number of point targets for both areas was investigated. The detected subsidence of the coastal plains and specially this of Rio could be attributed to the presence of active faults as the area is located over the hanging wall of the fault zone. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.