Surface deformations from moderate-sized earthquakes in Mongolia observed by InSAR

We investigate surface deformations associated with two moderate-sized shallow earthquakes that occurred in the southeastern and northwestern stable regions of Mongolia using an analysis of ENVISAT/ASAR and ALOS/PALSAR data, respectively. Differential interferograms generated by a standard two-pass interferometric analysing technique depicted an uplift of up to similar to 1 cm for the M-W 5.2 Hatanbulag composite earthquake (20 July, 2005, moderate-size foreshock in three hours) and a subsidence of up to similar to 10 cm for the M-W 5.1 Busiin Gol earthquake (19 January, 2008) in the radar line-of-sight directions, respectively. We inverted the observed deformations for the source parameters of the two earthquakes using elastic dislocation modeling. Our preferred model has geodetic moments of similar to 3.83 x 10(17) (M-w 5.6) and 5.56 x 10(16) N m (M-w 5.1) for the Hatanbulag and Busiin Gol earthquakes, respectively.