Long-term monitoring of temporal gravity field and ground water level changes in Iran and its associated ground subsidence seen by geodetic methods are important for water source and hazard management.The high-rate (cm to dm/year) ground subsidence in Iran has been widely investigated by using different geodetic techniques such as precise leveling, GPS and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR). The previous individual SAR sensors (e.g. ERS, ENVISAT and ALOS) or multi-sensors approach have successfully shown localized subsidence in different parts of Iran. Now, thanks to freely available new SAR sensor Sentinel-1A data, we aim at investigate further the subsidence problem in this region.
In this ongoing research, firstly, we use a series of Sentinel-1A SAR Images, acquired between 2014 to 2017 to generate subsidence-rate maps in different parts of the country. Then, we correlate the InSAR results with the monthly observations of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission in this region. The monthly GRACE data computed at CNES from 2002 to 2017 are used to compute the time series for total water storage changes. The Global Land Data Assimilation System( GLDAS) hydrological model (i.e. soil moisture, snow water equivalent and surface water) is used to estimate Groundwater changes from total water storage changes obtiaend from GRACE data.
So far, we have generated a few interferograms, using Sentinel-1A data and SNAP software, which shows a few cm subsidence in western Tehran in last 2 years. We will try more Sentinel images for this area to better constrain the rate and extent of deformation and will continue InSAR processing for the rest of the country to localize the deformation zones and their rates. We will finally comapre the rates of subsidence obtained from InSAR and the rate of groundwater changes estimated from GRACE data.