Dr. Estelle Chaussard
Lead Research Scientist

About me
Research
Publications


My work focuses on the development & usage of space-based techniques to detect small changes and movements of the Earth's surface.
I use a variety of datasets (InSAR, GNSS, LiDAR, optical, seismic, hydrologic, & geomorphologic data) combined with physical and machine learning models to approach a variety of natural hazards research problems.

After 5 years in tenure track, I left academia and joined Industry.
You should consider it too! It gives me the opportunity to do meaningful, applied research, have more freedom of research and more time for it, and it's a truly inclusive, diverse, and collaborative environment! 

Mobirise

Publications

  29
    (17 as first author)

Citations

  2,700+  
    (as of Mar. 2023)

Talks & Seminars

  80+  
    (including >30 invited talks)

Funding

M$1.5
    (NSF Career & NASA Awards)
Research Publications

Vertical land motion & Hydrology

Land subsidence is a wide-spread consequence of groundwater extraction and it informs the state of sustainability of water resources

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Geomorphology & Coastal Vulnerability

Peatlands degrade and reclaimed land compacts. Where, why, and how fast inform future flood risks and climate change feedbacks

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Earthquakes &
Active Tectonics

Ground deformation during, between, and after earthquakes helps understand the physics of fault failure and refine seismic hazards

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Volcanoes & Landslides

Differentiating background processes from physical precursors to a landslide or volcanic eruption is needed for reliable forecasts  

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Mobirise

Satellites help us better manage the water crisis 

Land subsidence due to groundwater pumping is widespread and can be measured from space. In some regions, such as Indonesia and Mexico, the ground is sinking over a foot each year, highlighting the increased flood risk and the need for water sustainability planning.
In other regions, such as parts of California, management of water resources is showing promising results.
See our work in A JGR, GRL, JGR, RSE, WRR, JGR, RSE & RSE

Subsidence in Indonesia and Mexico is extremely widespread and rapid: over a foot per year!

Check out our works already cited over 500 time each in Mexico & Indonesia and take a look at our work integrating InSAR with GRACE

Deformation data reveals more than just ups and downs: it helps us monitor aquifer health

Check out our works in the San Joaquin Valley, the Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara Valley, and in Mexico City

For peat's sake!

Peat degradation, resulting from land-use changes, leads to biodiversity loss, increased CO2 emissions, increased occurrence of fires, haze, land subsidence, and flooding. But little process-based work had been done on the geomorphology of degrading tropical peatlands due to the limited accessibility. Comes in Remote Sensing!
See our ground-breaking results in Nature Geoscience

Mobirise

ALL degraded peat is sinking! But not all at the same speed: geomorphology and land use history matter.

We quantified widespread peat carbon loss by using InSAR remote sensing across 2.7 Mha of Indonesian peat. Over 90% of it is subsiding at a mean rate of 2.2 cm/yr. The region now faces high risks of flooding and loss of land.

Peat oxidation following deforestation is responsible for significant CO2 emissions 

Vertical ground deformation can be used to provide refined estimates of CO2 emissions from peat oxidation. Peat oxidation is responsible for production of 155 ± 30 Megatons of CO2 per year, similar in magnitude to both regional fossil-fuel emissions and fires.

Mobirise

From space to underground: Deformation between earthquakes improves knowledge of seismic hazards 

Measuring interseismic deformation traditionally relies on GNSS, alignment arrays, and creepmeters data, which provide precise, but sparse measurements. We improved the coverage of multi-temporal InSAR with a new time-series method and combined 3D deformation with seismological data to illuminate previously unknown fault segments.
See our work in GRL, JGR, G3, & JGR

Hayward & Calaveras faults (in the east San Francisco Bay Area) are directly connected leading to risk for earthquakes with Mw> 7

Characteristically Repeating Earthquakes and InSAR data illuminate the junction between these faults through an east-dipping plane. Hayward and Calaveras are in fact a single fault branching out in 2 segments.

InSAR alone can resolve long-wavelength deformation signal as small as 2 mm/yr 

We developed a new InSAR time-series method in which interferogram selection is based on the coherence so that we can map deformation in vegetated areas.

Mobirise

Deforming volcanoes can be scary, BUT in many cases they shouldn't!

Some volcanoes deform before they erupt. Others erupt without precursory deformation. And some deform without erupting. Understanding the source of ground deformation for volcanoes -- as for landslides --can help towards the forecast of catastrophic events.
See our work in JVGR, ESR, JGR, GRL, & G3

Deformation can be due to pressure changes in a magmatic system but also from surficial processes such as lava cooling and slope motion.

At Paricutin, the lava field emplaced in 1943-1952 is *still* cooling and compacting.
At Stromboli the cooling-induced deformation accounts for only 9% of the rapid deformation observed, the remainder tens of cm/year are gravity-driven.

For the first time, deformation along entire volcanic arcs is constrained through timeseries of InSAR data. For volcanoes, not all that goes up goes down!

In Indonesia and Mexico, some volcanoes uplift before erupting. Others erupt with little deformation preceding. Others still deform regularly but do not erupt. Baselines for "normal" processes matter and require long time-series.

Publications etc.

Education & Appointments 

Ph.D. Univ. of Miami (FL), 2013, Geology & Geophysics
M.Sc. Univ. of Montpellier II, Montpellier (France), 2008, Earth Sciences 
B.Sc. Univ. of Montpellier II, Montpellier (France), 2006, Earth Sciences
A.Sc. Univ. of Burgundy, Dijon (France), 2005, Biology

Lead Research Scientist (private sector)
Senior Research Scientist (private sector)
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences, U. of Oregon
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Geology, U. at Buffalo
Postdoctoral investigator, U. of California, Berkeley
NASA Earth and Space Science Graduate Fellow, U. of Miami
Graduate Research Assistant, U. of Miami
Graduate Research Assistant, U. of Montpellier II (France)

Publications

**Student first-author under direct advising/mentoring     *Collaboration with student first-author

29. Mirzadeh, S. M. J.*, Jin, S., Chaussard, E., Bürgmann, R., Rezaei, A., Ghotbi, S., and Braun, A. (2023). Transition and drivers of elastic to inelastic deformation in the Abarkuh Plain from InSAR multi‐sensor time series and hydrogeological data. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 128(7), e2023JB026430.

28. Ermert, L. A.*, Cabral-Cano, E., Chaussard, E., Solano-Rojas, D., Quintanar, L., Morales Padilla, D., Fernández-Torres, E. A., and Denolle, M. A. (2023). Probing environmental and tectonic changes underneath Mexico City with the urban seismic field, Solid Earth, https://doi.org/10.5194/se-14-529-2023, 2023.

27. Mirzadeh, S. M. J.*, Jin, S., Parizi, E., Chaussard, E., Bürgmann, R., Delgado Blasco, J. M., et al. (2021). Characterization of Irreversible Land Subsidence in the Yazd‐Ardakan Plain, Iran From 2003 to 2020 InSAR Time Series. JGR-Solid Earth, 126(11), e2021JB022258.

26. Chaussard, E., Havazli, E., Fattahi, H., Cabral‐Cano, E., & Solano‐Rojas, D. (2021). Over a century of sinking in mexico city: No hope for significant elevation and storage capacity recovery. JGR-Solid Earth, 126, e2020JB020648. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JB020648

25. Hoyt, A.**, Chaussard E., Seppalainen, S.S., Harvey, C.F., (2020). Widespread Subsidence and Carbon Emissions across Southeast Asian Peatlands. Nature Geoscience, 13, 435–440. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0575-4

24. Chaussard, E., & Farr, T. G., (2019). A new method for isolating elastic from inelastic deformation in aquifer systems: Application to the San Joaquin Valley, CA. Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 10800– 10809. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084418

23. Schaefer, L.N.*, Di Traglia, F., Chaussard, E., Lu, Z., Nolesini, T., Casagli N., (2019). Monitoring volcano slope instability with Synthetic Aperture Radar: A review and new data from Pacaya (Guatemala) and Stromboli (Italy) volcanoes. Earth-science reviews, 192, pp236-257, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2019.03.009

22. Xu, W.*, Wu, S., Materna, K., Nadeau, R., Floyd, M., Funning, G., Chaussard, E., Johnson, C.W., Murray, J.R., Ding, X. and Bürgmann, R. (2018), Interseismic ground deformation and fault slip rates in the greater San Francisco Bay Area from two decades of space geodetic data, JGR-Solid Earth, 123(9), 8095-8109, doi: 10.1029/2018JB016004

21. Cohen-Waeber, J.**, Burgmann, R., Chaussard, E., Giannico, C., and Ferretti, A. (2018), Spatiotemporal Patterns of Precipitation-Modulated Landslide Deformation from Independent Component Analysis of InSAR Time Series, Geophysical research Letters, 64(1), 70, doi:10.1016/j.enggeo.2014.03.003

20. Castellazzi, P.*, Longuevergne, L., Martel., R., Rivera, A., Brouard, C., Chaussard, E., Garfias, J. (2018) Combining GRACE and InSAR for quantitative mapping of groundwater depletion at the water management scale, Rem. Sens. Env., 205, 408–418, doi:10.1016/j.rse.2017.11.025

19. Zhan, Y.*, Gregg, P.M., Chaussard, E., and Aoki., Y. (2017) Sequential assimilation of volcanic monitoring data to quantify eruption potential: application to Kerinci volcano, Sumatra. Front. Earth Sci. 5:108. doi: 10.3389/feart.2017.00108

18. Chaussard, E., Milillo P., Bürgmann R., Perissin D., Fielding E. J. & Baker B., (2017). Remote sensing of ground deformation for monitoring groundwater management practices: application to the Santa Clara Valley during the 2012-2015 California drought. Journal of Geophysical Research, 122, 8566-8582. doi.org/10.1002/2017JB014676

17. Chaussard, E., (2017). A low-cost method applicable worldwide for remotely mapping lava dome growth. J. Volcan. geotherm. Res. 341, 33-4, doi.org/10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2017.05.017

16. Castellazzi, P.*, Martel, R., Rivera, A., Huang, J., Pavlic, G., Calderhead, A. I., Chaussard, E., Garfias, J., and Salas, J., (2016), Groundwater depletion in Central Mexico: Use of GRACE and InSAR to support water resources management, Water Resources Res., 52, (8), 5985-6003.

15. Chaussard, E., (2016) Subsidence in the Parícutin lava field: causes and implications for interpretation of deformation fields at volcanoes. J. Volcan. geotherm. Res., 320, 1-11.

14. Chaussard, E., Kerosky, S.** (2016) Characterization of Black Sand Mining Activities and Their Environmental Impacts in the Philippines Using Remote Sensing. Remote Sensing, 8(2), 100; doi:10.3390/rs8020100

13. Chaussard, E., Johnson, C.W., Fattahi, H., and Bürgmann, R., (2016) Potential and limits of InSAR to characterize interseismic deformation independently of GPS data: application to the southern San Andreas Fault system. G-cubed, 17, doi:10.1002/2015GC006246

12. Chaussard, E., Bürgmann, R., Fattahi, H., Johnson, C. W., Nadeau, R., Taira, T., and Johanson, I., (2015) Interseismic coupling and refined earthquake potential on the Hayward-Calaveras fault zone, J. of Geophysical Research, 120, doi:10.1002/2015JB012230

11. Chaussard, E., Bürgmann R., Fattahi, H., Nadeau, R., Taira, T., Johnson, C.W., and Johanson, I., (2015) Potential for larger earthquakes in the East San Francisco Bay Area due to the direct connection between the Hayward & Calaveras Faults, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, doi: 10.1002/2015GL063575

10. Fattahi, H.*, Amelung, F., Chaussard, E., Wdowinski, S., (2015) Coseismic and postseismic deformation due to the 2007 M5.5 Ghazaband fault earthquake, Balochistan, Pakistan. Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, doi:10.1002/2015GL063686

9. Cabral-Cano, E., Solano-Rojas, D., Oliver-Cabrera, T., Wdowinski, S., Chaussard, E., et al. (2015) Satellite geodesy tools for ground subsidence and associated shallow faulting hazard assessment in central Mexico, Proc. of the Int. Assoc. of Hydro. Sc., 372, doi:10.5194/piahs-372-255-2015

8. Chaussard, E., Bürgmann, R., Shirzaei, M., Fielding, E.J., and Baker, B., (2014) Predictability of hydraulic head changes and basin-wide aquifer system and fault characterization from InSAR-derived ground deformation. J. of Geophysical Research, 119, 6572–6590, doi: 10.1002/2014JB011266

7. Chaussard, E., and Amelung, F., (2014) Regional controls on magma ascent and storage in volcanic arcs. G-cubed, 15, doi:10.1002/2013GC005216

6. Chaussard, E., Wdowinski, S., Cabral E., and Amelung, F., (2014). Land subsidence in central Mexico detected by ALOS InSAR time-series, Rem. Sens. of Env., 140, 94–106

5. Chaussard, E., Amelung, F., Abidin, H., & Hong, S.-H., (2013) Sinking cities in Indonesia: ALOS PALSAR detects rapid subsidence due to groundwater and gas extraction. Remote Sensing of Environment, 128, 21, 150-161, doi:10.1016/j.rse.2012.10.015

4. Chaussard, E., and Amelung F., (2013) Characterization of Geological Hazards Using a Globally Observing Spaceborne SAR. Photogram. Eng. & Rem. Sens., 79, 11, 982-986

3. Chaussard, E., Amelung, F., and Aoki, Y., (2013) Characterization of closed and open volcanic systems in Indonesia and Mexico using InSAR time-series. J. of Geophysical Research, 118, doi:10.1002/jgrb.50288

2. Chaussard, E., & Amelung F., (2012) Precursory inflation of shallow magma reservoirs at west Sunda volcanoes detected by InSAR. Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, 21, doi: 10.1029/2012GL053817

1. Chaussard, E., Amelung, F., and Abidin, H., (2012) Sinking cities in Indonesia: space-geodetic evidences of the rates and spatial distribution of land subsidence. Proceedings of the FRINGE 2011 Workshop, Frascati, Italy (ESA SP-696)

All information and images on this website are copyrighted (2023) by Estelle Chaussard.
Pictures may be used for non-commercial purposes with appropriate source attribution.


Scars remind us where we’ve been, they don’t have to dictate where we’re going
- SSA David Rossi 


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