1.1. Who is this guide for?

This guide is written for anyone interested in learning about or using space-based geodetic data in their work/studies/research. Our goal is to not only make these products accessible to the community but to also garner interest in the future of SCEC CGM products. We attempt here to introduce GNSS and InSAR data to an audience that may have been scared off in the past by the data processing procedures, but also to present a novel GNSS and InSAR data product to the audience of people who already use geodetic data regularly. Obtaining “easy-to-use” geodetic data products has, in the past, often required a user to dive deeply into the minutia of processing techniques and methodology, a dive that many interested users may not have the time or computational resources to complete, particularly for InSAR data. Recent efforts to bring more automated and higher-level geodetic data products to users have made substantial progress, and here we extend this progress for the region of southern California. This guide in its current form is meant to serve as a reference and instruction manual for viewing and accessing the SCEC CGM datasets.

In Section 6, for those that may be new to using InSAR data, we describe what InSAR measurements are, how they are collected by satellites, how we take what is measured by a satellite and turn it into displacement measurements, and what can introduce errors into the process. This is by no means a comprehensive overview, and we recommend that interested readers who desire more detail visit the Resources section (Section A.5) to find suggested further reading to learn more.