Analysis of Land Displacement Utilizing Sentinel-1 Satellite Imagery and InSAR Technique: A Case Study in Kern County, California

This study investigates patterns of land displacement in Kern County, California, using Sentinel-1 satellite imagery and the Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique. A time-series analysis was performed to examine the temporal evolution of land displacement using the Small Baseline Subset (SBAS-InSAR) approach. The LicSAR (Comet Portal) and Liscbas toolbox were employed to analyze Sentinel-1 satellite data collected between 2014 and 2022. For the ascending orbit, the observation period spanned approximately 6.6 years, encompassing 256 images and 1,499 interferograms. The descending orbit covered around 7 years, with a network of 266 images and 954 interferograms. The data were decomposed into ascending and descending paths to identify both vertical and horizontal displacement patterns. An accuracy evaluation was conducted using 85 GPS stations in central California, revealing an RMSE of 1.89 and an R -squared value of 0.9 for the horizontal direction, and an RMSE of 2.4 with an R -squared value of 0.94 for the vertical direction, indicating a high level of accuracy. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of InSAR in capturing detailed land displacement patterns. This study also discusses the advantages and limitations of using InSAR for tracking land deformation and provides recommendations for future research.