ASSESSING THE POSSIBILITY OF LAND SUBSIDENCE DUE TO GEOTHERMAL PRODUCTION IN SARULLA GEOTHERMAL FIELD USING SENTINEL-1

Mochamad Iqbal, Panggea Ghiyats Sabrian

Abstract

Sarulla geothermal field is one of the largest geothermal fields in the world which has a 330 MW installed capacity. The field consists of three areas, namely Namora Langit (NIL)-1, NIL-2, and Silangkitang (SIL) which operated from 2017 and 2018. It is situated precisely at the Sarulla graben which is an active tectonic area composed of Quaternary Toba tuff and intermediate lava and extrusive felsic pyroclastic Toru. This study aims to see whether land subsidence may emerge in the Sarulla geothermal field and its environs in addition to determining whether the geothermal activity or anthropogenic is responsible for the deformation. We used the persistent scatterer (PS) interferometry synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) method to calculate the rate of subsidence in the area. 30 ascending images from Sentinel-1 were gathered from 5 January to 18 December 2020 with a separation of 12 days to run the analysis. The results demonstrate that Sarulla is undergoing subsidence occurring at NIL and SIL with a velocity of 0 to -32.9 mm/year. Although negative deformation occurs in the geothermal area, there is no solid evidence indicating geothermal fluid extraction is the cause of subsidence.

Keywords

geothermal, Sarulla, subsidence, PS-InSAR

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References

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30536/j.ijreses.2023.v20.a3843

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