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Time series of InSAR-derived surface deformation from 2015 – 2021 at Johns Hopkins Inlet and Gilman Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Satellite interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) time series data were processed to investigate a large bedrock landslide above Gilman Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska. The time series of surface deformation for the landslide and surrounding region are presented here. The Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) HyP3 service (Hybrid Pluggable Processing Pipeline; Hogenson and others, 2020) was used to process Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery (available from the European Space Agency at https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/) from May 2015 to October 2021. We process descending track 145 data with an adaptive phase filter strength of 0.6 at 10x2 looks. This reduces phase noise in interferograms for InSAR pairs with low coherence and multilooks these data in the range and azimuth by 10 and 2 times respectively, which results in an 80 m spatial resolution. The MintPy (Miami InSAR time-series software in Python) software was used to process the HyP3-generated interferograms into a time series of surface deformation (Yunjun and others, 2019). Time series values are reported in the satellite’s line-of-sight (average incidence angle = 35.3°, heading angle = 197.3°, as defined in Van Natijne and others, 2022). This means a displacement of -5 mm is indicating 5 mm of ground movement away from the satellite. The area of interest, which includes the Gilman Glacier and landslide, is outlined in orange in Figure 1. The landslide is located on the SW-facing slope above Gilman Glacier, measuring 1690 m wide at its base (Hults and others, 2023). Our time series detected surface displacement on the landslide that is steadily moving over the span of 2015 to 2021. Outside of the area of interest, a region on the NW-facing slope immediately north of the landslide shows episodic movement away from the satellite, mostly concentrated in the summer of 2021. This is in a region of fractures mapped by Hults and others (2023). There is additionally a 750 m wide region of downslope movement in the SW corner of the map above the Johns Hopkins Glacier (labeled B in Figure 1; 58.796°, -137.132°). In the summer of 2018, we see -50 mm of movement, and the net ground movement from 2015 to 2021 is -150 mm. There are no mapped fractures, scarps, faults, and landslides by Hults and others (2023) in this area. For ease of data visualization, we recommend viewing the Gilman_timeseries_2015_2021.shp file using the “InSAR Explorer” Plugin available in QGIS (Haghshenas, 2025; QGIS, 2023).

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Author(s) Elizabeth M Eiden, Lauren N Schaefer orcid
Publication Date 2025-06-18
Beginning Date of Data 2015-05-19
Ending Date of Data 2021-10-08
Data Contact
DOI https://doi.org/10.5066/P1CIESUJ
Citation Eiden, E.M., and Schaefer, L.N., 2025, Time series of InSAR-derived surface deformation from 2015 – 2021 at Johns Hopkins Inlet and Gilman Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P1CIESUJ.
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Metadata Date 2025-06-18
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Citations of these data No citations of these data are known at this time.
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License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
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Harvest Source: ScienceBase
Harvest Date: 2026-04-24T04:52:10.684Z