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Background

The Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG)-2018 Assessment found that knowing where the land surface is deforming would help satisfy the satellite needs of all the United States (U.S.) land monitoring SNWG agencies. The North America Surface Displacement (DISP) data product uses imagery from 3 radar satellites (Sentinel-1 A/B and NASA/Indian Space Research Organisation Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR)) to identify where and when the land surface has moved from processes such as sinkholes, land subsidence, landslides, permafrost motion, volcanic unrest, earthquakes, and more, at <30 m resolution every 6, 12, or 24 days. The Sentinel-1 imagery provides a detailed deformation time series beginning with the launch of Sentinel-1 in 2014 but has limited coverage in regions with significant vegetation. NISAR’s vegetation penetrating L-band radar will be able to track land surface displacement in most of the ecosystems across North America. This SNWG activity is being managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) project, who will oversee the development, implementations, and operations. Further information about OPERA and the DISP product suite can be found below. 

Status

Products are in development. The intermediate product for DISP is available at Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center (ASF DAAC): https://search.asf.alaska.edu/#/?dataset=OPERA-S1 

Solution Characteristics

PlatformsTemporal FrequencyHorizontal ResolutionGeographic DomainLatencySpectral BandsThematic Areas
Sentinel-1 A, Sentinel-1 B, NISARWeekly<= 30 mNorth America, U.S. Territories~ 5 daysMicrowave (MW), Long-band (L-Band), Short-band (S-Band), Compromise-band (C-Band)Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems, Disaster Response, Earth Surface and Interior, Infrastructure Products/Other, Land Cover and Land Use Change, Ocean and Cryosphere, Water and Energy Cycle

Societal Impact

This solution provides timely maps of ground surface motion caused by diverse factors such as earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, subsidence and/or uplift caused by mining, groundwater loss, or fluid injection. These types of outputs are critical for hazard response and monitoring of infrastructure stability.​

Solution Resources

Need help using this solution? For more information about the DISP product, visit the following resources:


Workshops and Open Meetings

Title and Registration LinkDescriptionDate
Fourth OPERA Stakeholder Engagement WorkshopThe fourth OPERA workshop provides updates of OPERA data products in production, preliminary validation of data products that are near-production, and an overview of upcoming 2025 products. End users will have an opportunity to present their use (or planned use) of OPERA products.July 19, 2024
The Beginning of a New Era of Multidisciplinary NASA Satellite Data Products Enabled by the Satellite Needs Working GroupThe Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) is a U.S. Government inter-agency organizational body that was established in 2016 to identify the Earth observational gaps and data needs across the U.S. Federal Civilian Agencies. The SNWG effort is a 2-year process in which NASA identifies and ultimately implements a wide range of innovative solutions that benefit the entire Earth Science community. There are currently 19 different SNWG activities underway, with many of the products now operational. In this session, we will invite representatives from the implementation teams behind several of the highly successful SNWG products to describe the new capabilities and where to access the data. This includes the Harmonized Landsat/Sentinel-2 (HLS), which is a cloud optimized dataset that standardizes common data bands from the two satellite constellations thereby effectively doubling the data available to the community. Another SNWG activity is the generation of a global surface water extent product that combines the data frequency of the optical satellites and the cloud-penetrating capabilities of satellite radar for a uniformed and frequent surface water product. Other activities include new radiation and clouds products, global air quality, land surface disturbance, North America deformation, vegetation indices suite with HLS, and planetary boundary layer products.December 13, 2023
Third OPERA workshop: Introducing the OPERA Radiometric Terrain Corrected (RTC) Radar Backscatter and Coregistrated Single Look Complex (CSLC) ProductsIn this workshop, the OPERA team provided an update on the Dynamic Surface Water Extent and Surface Disturbance products. They also introduced provisional RTC and CSLC products. June 27, 2023
Second OPERA Workshop: Introducing OPERA Interim Products and Updates on Surface Water Extent and Disturbance ProductsIn this workshop, OPERA presented preliminary validation results for the surface water (DSWx) and surface disturbance (DIST) products while also providing information on how to access them.September 2, 2022