"A breakthrough in our capabilities to learn about earthquakes"… Interview with Yuri Fialko   Yuri Fialko, Associate Professor at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego   Multiple radar satellite images of the same site can be combined to access an additional dimension of information about it, a technique called Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR). Topography information acquired through InSAR can create Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) and also serve as a means of charting very slight surface deformation occurring between acquisitions. This diagram shows how a pair of images from twin ERS satellites were used to create a DEM of the Etna volcano in Sicily, Italy. Pairs of images acquired from the same spacecraft during different orbits can also be used for InSAR.   An Alaska Department of Transportation truck sits at the edge of one of the large cracks on the Tok Cutoff Highway, near Mentasta, Alaska, Monday, Nov. 4, 2002, caused by an 7.9 magnitude earthquake on Sunday that rocked a sparsely populated area of interior Alaska. Bruce Turner of the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, said the quake hit at 1:13 p.m Alaska Standard Time and was centered 90 miles south of Fairbanks.   The picture shows the cover page of Nature, Vol 364, 8 July 1993 Issue no. 6433. It shows the surface displacement associated with the June 1992 magnitude 7.3 earthquake in Landers, seen by interferometric processing of two images from the ERS-1 satellite. One full colour cycle in the interferometric fringes represent a change of 28 mm in the ground-to-satellite range between pre- and post-earthquake images. Solid lines show the surface rupture as mapped in the field. The image comes from a paper called 'The displacement field of the Landers earthquake mapped by radar interferometry' with authors Didier Massonnet, Marc Rossi, Cesar Carmona, Frederic Adragna (CNES), Gilles Pletzner (Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees) and Kurt Feigl (Scot Conseil) and published on pages 138 - 142.   Post-seismic deformation following the 1992 Landers earthquake measured by stacking of several tens of radar interferograms from ERS-1 and 2 data.   Slip model of the 2003 Bam earthquake derived from the Envisat ASAR data. The radar correlation is draped on top of the surface topography (viewed from below).   Color topography map of California, inset shows small-scale deformation on fault zones around the 1999 Hector Mine rupture   Perspective view of deformation on faults adjacent to the Hector Mine earthquake rupture   3-D vector displacement field from the Hector Mine earthquake derived from the ERS SAR data.   ESA's ten-instrument Envisat environmental satellite has been observing the Earth for more than three years. Picture by EADS Astrium. Release date: 25 January 2006