Chelsea Scott

Much of my research at ASU has focused on understanding how the Earth’s shallow crust accommodates plate motion during earthquakes and along aseismic faults. This research contributes to fundamental knowledge about earthquake physics, bridges observations over the decadal to millennial timescale, and informs seismic hazard. I developed new observational techniques to measure the far-field and largely elastic deformation as well as the on-fault and permanent deformation. For the 2016 Magnitude 7 Kumamoto, Japan, earthquake, I developed new insights about the mechanical behavior of faults and produced the first distributed coseismic slip inversion using differential topography data (Scott et al., 2019; Scott et al., 2018). Along the Creeping Section of the Central San Andreas Fault in California, I produced the spatially most dense set of 3D creep rate measurements and showed that the fault location has shifted over time (Scott et al., 2020A; Scott et al., 2020B). I have been highly involved in cyber-infrastructure research with OpenTopography and led the development of on-demand differencing tools (Scott et al., 2021) and the state-wide topographic differencing activity (Scott et al., 2022A). I spent a month as a visiting scientist at the University of Nice, France, and this collaboration led to a publication on measuring the geometry of normal faults in Eastern California (Scott et al., 2022B). In collaboration with a large team of students, professors, and industry geologists, I am leading and managing the ASU work to understand the seismic risk posed by fault displacement to critical infrastructure.