Published November 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Integrating Long-Term InSAR Monitoring Into Local Groundwater Management: Insights From the Hollywood Basin, California

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon The University of Texas at Dallas

Abstract

We demonstrate the effectiveness of long‐term continuous interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) monitoring for local resource management. Sustainable yield is a key concept in groundwater management to ensure sustainable, low‐impact groundwater extraction. This study proposes to estimate sustainable yield using InSAR, combined with local groundwater production data. We apply this method to the Hollywood Basin in Los Angeles, California, leveraging nearly 30 years of InSAR data (1992–2023) to investigate ground deformation linked to groundwater extraction. High spatial InSAR measurements reveal deforming regions linked to anthropogenic activities previously not well‐characterized by in situ observation networks. By integrating InSAR data with production records, we estimate the sustainable yield for the basin to be 1.44 to 1.67 million cubic meters per year, significantly lower than the current operating safe yield of 3.70 million cubic meters per year. Utilizing Independent Component Analysis, we are able to distinguish hydrological signals originating from the deep and shallow aquifers in the Hollywood Basin. Our findings demonstrate the effectiveness of InSAR for long‐term monitoring of anthropogenic deformation and for supporting urban planning and resource management.

Copyright and License

© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Acknowledgement

Sentinel data used in this study can be retrieved from the Alaska Satellite Facility at https://search.asf.alaska.edu/. ERS data used in this study can be retrieved from the European Space Agency at http://esar-ds.eo.esa.int/socat/SAR_IMS_1P/. UAVSAR data used in this study can be retrieved from https://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data.pl. The research was supported by a Grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to Mark Simons (award number 80NSSC22K1910). The authors would like to thank helpful discussions with Tobias Kohne, Rishav Mallick, Donald Argus, Matt Lees, and others.

Funding

The research was supported by a Grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to Mark Simons (award number 80NSSC22K1910).

Data Availability

The 30-year InSAR quasi-vertical time series produced from this work can be downloaded from https://zenodo.org/records/10999236.

Supplemental Material

Supporting Information S1 (PDF)

Files

Water Resources Research - 2025 - Zheng - Integrating Long‐Term InSAR Monitoring Into Local Groundwater Management .pdf

Additional details

Related works

Is supplemented by
Dataset: https://zenodo.org/records/10999236 (URL)

Funding

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC22K1910

Dates

Submitted
2024-10-10
Accepted
2025-10-24
Available
2025-11-05
Version of record online

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Seismological Laboratory, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
Publication Status
Published