Subsidence in Arizona measured with InSAR by Arizona Department of Water Resources

An email from the Arizona Department of Water Resources came by today announcing updates to their Land Subsidence Maps.

While the active tectonics of Arizona are rather limited, we do see distributed deformation of a few mm/year across the state with our most active faults in the western Grand Canyon. Jeff Lockridge has been working with me and Matt Fouch and our seismology colleagues in Arizona on an updated seismicity catalog (have a look here: Arizona State University Earthquake Information).

What I often point to as rather interesting ground deformation is that due to groundwater withdrawal and the associated subsidence. With Professor Jim Tyburczy and several former students (Maurice Tatlow, Paul Ivanich, Ken Fergason, and Amanda Perkins), we have dabbled a bit in this topic over the last 10 years. This link includes some of the results from our work.

Scottsdale subsidence feature with 3.2 years (11/15/2007 To 01/08/2011) of subsidence. The maximum is 4 cm. Paul Ivanich worked on the southeastern portion along the CAP canal for his M.S.

West Valley subsidence feature with 6.5 years (03/08/2004 To 09/13/2010) of subsidence. The maximum is 10 cm. Amanda Perkins worked in this area for her M.S.