Use of PSI for the Enhancement of Vertical Land Movement measurements in the UK

This relates to specific objective (ii) of WP1.9 of the Oceans 2025 programme and priority topic area 6 (Application of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar to vertical land movement) of SOFI. In this project, the PhD student will be looking at the application of Persistent Scatterers Interferometry (PSI) to the problem of linking measurements of land motion at tide gauges to the regional land motion surrounding it to provide a better estimate of the change in sea level around the UK coast that may be linked to climate change. The student will use PSI to produce information on the 'relative' changes in land level for an area around each of the 10 tide gauges equipped with continuous GPS(CGPS)/absolute gravity (AG) stations, with the aims of investigating the coherency of the changes in land level in that area and identifying the possible contributing sources to the 'absolute' changes in land level signal observed by CGPS and AG by considering the underlying geology. These aims will be met through the analysis of 'relative' changes in land level based on naturally occurring PS points identified through the processing of all available InSAR data for the period from 1997 to present. The student will also investigate the use of precisely surveyed artificial corner reflectors to act as calibration and control and provide an absolute method of adjustment for the PSI measurements. The student will build upon the expertise of the IESSG in the design and implementation of a PSI demonstrator, but through a development of the free software STaMPS. For comparison and calibration, the student will also have access to the commercial PSI software from Gamma, provided by the British Geological Survey.