Earthquake cycle research with satellites

<p>The motion of the Earth's tectonic plates creates a gradual accumulation of stress at their boundaries followed by a rapid release in earthquakes a process known as the earthquake cycle. Studying this process is important because of the hazards</p><p>earthquakes pose but presents challenges due to the multi-scale nature of the problem-stresses build up over hundreds to thousands of years while earthquakes break narrow fault zones in a matter of seconds. In this thesis we combine a variety</p><p>of techniques to study the earthquake cycle on multiple temporal and spatial scales including satellite-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) to observe the slow deformation of the Earth over wide areas and high-performance</p><p>computational simulations to model faults during earthquakes. We begin by presenting a method for removing the signal of plate-tectonic motion in large-scale InSAR measurements allowing for better observation of small ground deformations.</p>