Joint inversion of the 2011 Tohoku (Japan) earthquake from dinsar and GPS data

On March 11, 2011 a Mw 9.0 earthquake hit Honsu island in Japan. The so called “Tohoku-Oki” giant earthquake occurred near the northeast coast resulting from thrust faulting on or near the subduction zone plate boundary between the Pacific and North America plates. The rupture zone is roughly centered on the earthquake epicenter alongstrike, while peak slips were up-dip of the hypocenter, towards the Japan Trench axis. The rupture was also responsible of a big tsunami that struck a large portion of the coastal area of Tohoku-Oki region. Soon after the earthquake numerous space remote sensing sensors were tasked to acquire as much as possible information about the situation on ground. In particular, a large numbers of SAR images were collected from the ENVISAT and ERS-2 satellite. For this event, a group of researchers from the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), named Tohoku-Oki INGV Team, decided to apply a multidisciplinary approach to carry on some analysis addressed to achieve added value outcomes. In this work we present part of the work done by the Team concerning DInSAR data analysis and the methodology to retrieve the seismic source of this extraordinary and disastrous event.