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Katherine Guns

Katherine Guns is a Research Geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Science Center in Moffett Field, CA. She uses satellite-based geodetic measurements like InSAR and GPS to investigate active faults as well as the crustal deformation processes that occur after large earthquakes.

Katherine started out studying earthquakes and faults through geological field mapping and working in labs to characterize how faults slip over long timescales (over the last ~2,000-50,000 years). In graduate school, she switched gears and dove into tectonic geodesy, where you can use satellite measurements to determine how the surface of the Earth is moving and changing in the present day. Now, she uses Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) and Global Positioning System (GPS) observations to explore earthquake and active fault deformation. One of her favorite topics is characterizing the processes that happen just after a large magnitude earthquake, and determining how those processes continue and evolve in time and space (and potentially cause additional hazard).

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