Line‐of‐sight displacement from ALOS‐2 interferometry: Mw7.8 Gorkha Earthquake and Mw7.3 aftershock

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is a key tool for the analysis of displacement and stress changes caused by large crustal earthquakes, particularly in remote areas. A challenge for traditional InSAR has been its limited spatial and temporal coverage especially for very large events, whose dimensions exceed the typical swath width of 70–100 km. This problem is addressed by the ALOS‐2 satellite, whose PALSAR‐2 instrument operates in ScanSAR mode, enabling a repeat time of 2 weeks and a swath width of 350 km. Here we present InSAR line‐of‐sight displacement data from ALOS‐2/PALSAR‐2 observations covering the Mw7.8 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake and its Mw7.3 aftershock that were acquired within 1 week of each event. The data are made freely available and we encourage their use in models of the fault slip and associated stress changes. The Mw7.3 aftershock not only extended the rupture area of the main shock toward the east but also left a 20 km gap where the fault has little or no coseismic slip. We estimate this unslipped fault patch has the potential to generate a Mw6.9 event. Observations of the Mw7.8 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake and Mw7.3 aftershock are presentedALOS‐2 provides burst‐aligned ScanSAR interferometry with 350 km swath widthData from coseismic and postseismic interferograms are available online for use in modeling studies