IST Lunch Bunch

The last two decades have seen an explosion of new observations made from orbiting radar satellites that provide synoptic maps of the surface of Earth's straining crust.  These observations allow us to measure processes associated with the entire seismic cycle (inter-seismic elastic strain accumulation and co-seismic elastic strain release), as well as allowing us to constrain basic mechanical properties of glacial ice streams and volcanic magma chambers.  Going forwards, we are faced with the luxury of observations provided on nearly weekly intervals from a variety of spacecraft - anticipated data rates are 24 Tbits/day from a single satellite.  In this talk, I describe a few examples of the use of such data, the challenges faced with making movies of ground deformation, and the current state of using these observations in a Bayesian framework to infer subsurface fault processes.  I end with examples of using such observations for rapid response to natural disasters.