Crustal Source for a Syenite Complex in the High-grade Eastern Ghats Belt, India: Sm-Nd Isotopic Evidence

Several plutonic alkaline complexes have been reported from the high-grade Eastern Ghats belt, India and these are thought to have been derived from the mantle. The field features of the syenite complex around Rairakhol in Orissa indicate progressive deformation during emplacement and could be related to the latest deformation/folding in the host granulitic country rocks. Presence of some mafic granulite xenoliths could suggest a crustal source for this syenite complex.Negative epsilon value is a strong indication of crustal source. The long crustal residence ages and ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd values less than 0.5120, definitely indicate a crustal source.     

Usefulness of adaptive filtering for improved Digital Elevation Model generation

The Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), which represent the variation of elevation in a terrain at spatial level, are an important source of input to a variety of applications for deriving a number of terrain parameters such as relative relief, slope, aspect direction etc. In recent years, Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry has been viewed as a powerful approach to derive quality DEMs from a pair of SAR images. Despite the interferometric technique is often limited by several de-correlations several researchers demonstrate its effectiveness in topographic mapping. The DEM accuracy is strongly influenced by the effectiveness of the phase unwrapping technique. In this study an effective adaptive filtering approach has been used to reduce the phase noise due to de-correlation and in improving the accuracy of phase unwrapping. Two well known phase unwrapping approaches such as branch cut and minimum cost flow network have been used. Interferometric data from ASAR sensor onboard ENVISAT satellite have been used. A highly undulated terrain condition near Dehradun city situated in Uttarakhand state of India was selected to investigate the performance of this adaptive filtering approach. The RMS error between the InSAR derived elevations and the map derived elevations was obtained as 7.2 m using adaptive filter. However, elevation map of the study area could not be generated due to high de-correlation effect without the use of adaptive filter. This result clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of adaptive filtering approach for generation of DEM at meter level accuracy, which is sufficient for many engineering applications.     

Surface displacement estimation along Himalayan frontal fault using differential SAR interferometry

The Himalayan region has been studied extensively during the past few decades in terms of present ongoing deformations. Various models have been proposed for the evolution of the Himalaya to explain the cause of earthquake occurrences and to understand the seismotectonics of the Himalayan collision zone. However, the information on displacements from field geodetic surveys is still too scarce in time and spatial domains so as to provide convincing evidences. Moreover, classical Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Approaches also fail due to paucity of data in higher magnitude range, thus emphasizing the need of spatial level displacement measurements. It is in this context that the present study has been carried out to estimate the surface displacement in a seismically active region of the Himalaya between Ganga and Yamuna Tear using Differential SAR interferometry. Three single-look complex images, obtained from ASAR sensor onboard ENVISAT satellite, have been used. A displacement rate of 8?C10?mm per year in N15°E direction of Indian plate has been obtained in this three-pass SAR interferometry study. It has been noted that the estimated convergence rate using Differential SAR interferometry technique is relatively low in comparison with those obtained from previous classical studies. The reported low convergence rate may be due to occurrence of silent/quite earthquakes, aseismic slip, differential movement of Delhi Hardwar ridge, etc. Therefore, in view of the contemporary seismicity and conspicuous displacements, a study of long-term observations of this surface movement has been recommended in future through a time-series SAR interferometry analysis.