São Jorge Island (Azores) volcano-seismic crisis (March 2022)

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The island of Sao Jorge, in the Azores, has registered more than 20,000 small earthquakes, with magnitudes up to 3.8, since 19 March 2022.

The activity started under the NW part of the island and is most likely caused by a magmatic intrusion at 10-15 km depth that could indicate renewed eruptive activity in the future.

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Figure 1. Ground deformation (15/03/2022-27/03/2022) at São Jorge Island using P-SBAS service on GEP.

Ground deformation was detected from the analysis of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data acquired by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite mission through GEP platform. Results obtained by the P-SBAS and DIAPASON services are consistent showing significant deformation patterns given the low magnitude tremors. Maximum uplift at the order of 10 cm was observed at the affected area.

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Figure 2. Ground deformation (15/03/2022-27/03/2022) at São Jorge Island using DIAPASON service on GEP.

Results are publicly available for further scientific analysis and interpretation for both P-SBAS and DIAPASON services.

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Very nice to see consistency of Sentinel-1 based INSAR measurements. Can you explain why the IFG map using P-SBAS provides a discrete list of points while DIAPASON provides spatialy continuous measurements?

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Indeed, this is a nice clarification for EO users. This is due to the processing techniques, DIAPASON works on continuous images, while P-SBAS is extracting and handling phase information on discrete points (regular grid) corresponding to the center of raster pixels. Outputs are in different format, but both results are accurate!

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