PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF DIFFERENTIAL INTERFEROMETRY IN WEST-CENTRAL ARGENTINA

EUILLADES, PABLO; BROOKS, BENJAMIN; BLANCO, MAURO; EUILLLADES, LEONARDO

Frascati, Italia

Workshop; Fringe 2005 Workshop; 2005

European Space Agency

With two major population centers totaling 1.5 million in population (Mendoza and San Juan cities) and a history of destructive earthquakes ranging from M6-7 in the past century, West-Central Argentina´s Precordillera region has some of the highest seismic risks in South America. Ongoing continuous and survey GPS studies show that the region accomodates velocity gradients on the order of a few - 5 mm/yr over 10s -100s of kilometers. The spatial sparseness of these data sets, however, makes it difficult to identify localized sites of strain accumulation. With the goal of identifying regions most likely correlated with potentially active seismic sources we are actively analyzing differential InSAR results from ERS 1-2 and Envisat data more recently acquired. Here, we present our initial results and discuss potential regions of newly identified deformation.