Christelle Wauthier, associate professor of geosciences at Penn State, will deliver a talk titled "Imaging Deformation Processes in Areas Prone to Natural Hazards with Satellite Geodesy" at noon on Friday, Jan. 23, in 401 Steidle Building on the Penn State University Park campus. The talk will also be accessible via Zoom.
Wauthier will discuss how volcanic unrest and associated hazards, such as eruptions, landslides, earthquakes and tsunamis, can be better understood through the imaging of surface displacements over time. These events can devastate nearby communities and, in the case of larger eruptions, disrupt air travel, spread hazardous ash over wide regions and even contribute to short-term climate impacts.
She will discuss the use of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), a satellite-based remote sensing technique that captures ground deformation across time and space. Wauthier will present examples of how InSAR, combined with geophysical modeling and other ground-based or remotely sensed data, helps researchers interpret subsurface processes like magma movement, fault slip and structural collapse. She will also share how these tools support improved monitoring, early warning efforts and hazard mitigation strategies that can reduce damage, save lives and inform decision-making in hazard-prone regions.
Wauthier's research integrates satellite observations, computational modeling and natural hazards analysis to study how volcanoes and tectonic systems deform Earth's crust. She serves as director of Penn State's Computational Sciences Hub in the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences and is president of the American Geophysical Union's Natural Hazards Section.
Wauthier earned her doctoral and undergraduate degrees in engineering from the University of Liège in Belgium. She also holds dual master's degrees in geological engineering from the University of Liège and in volcanology from the University of Blaise-Pascal in France.
Wauthier's lecture marks the first event of the spring 2026 Coffee Hour seminar series hosted by Penn State's Department of Geography. To learn more and access Zoom information, visit the Coffee Hour event webpage.
