Abstract
The Earth’s surface is affected by numerous local processes like volcanic events, landslides or earthquakes. Along with these natural processes, anthropogenic activities including extraction and storage of deep resources (e.g. minerals, hydrocarbons) shape the Earth at different space and time scales. These mechanisms produce ground deformation that can be detected by various geodetic instruments like GNSS, InSAR, tiltmeters, for example. The purpose of the thesis is to develop a numerical tool to provide the joint inversion of multiple geodetic data associated to plate deformation or volume strain change at depth. Four kinds of applications are targeted: interseismic plate deformation, volcano deformation, deep mining, and oil & gas extraction. Different inverse model complexities were considered: the I-level considers a single type of geodetic data with a time independent process. An application is made with inverting GPS data across southern California to determine the lateral variations of lithospheric rigidity (Furst et al., 2017). The II-level also accounts for a single type of geodetic data but with a time-dependent process. The joint determination of strain change history and the drift parameters of a tiltmeter network is studied through a synthetic example (Furst et al., submitted). The III-level considers different types of geodetic data and a timedependent process. A fictitious network made by GNSS, InSAR, tiltmeters and levelling surveys is defined to compute the time dependent volume change of a deep source of strain. We develop a methodology to implement these different levels of complexity in a single software. Because the inverse problem is possibly ill-posed, the functional to minimize may display several minima. Therefore, a global optimization algorithm is used (Mohammadi and Saïac, 2003). The forward part of the problem is treated by using a collection of numerical and analytical elastic models allowing to model the deformation processes at depth. Thanks to these numerical developments, new advances for inverse geodetic problems should be possible like the joint inversion of various types of geodetic data acquired for volcano monitoring. In this perspective, the possibility to determine by inverse problem the tiltmeter drift parameters should allow for a precise determination of deep strain sources. Also, the developed methodology can be used for an accurate monitoring of oil & gas reservoir deformation.