Dr. Cathleen Jones will be giving  a talk about the Bayou Corne Louisiana sinkhole. Sinkholes are a major concern in costal areas. Her lecture, entitled, “Bayou Corne Louisiana Sinkhole: Precursory deformation and sinkhole expansion measured by radar interferometry” will be held Tuesday, April 8, 2014 in Argyros Forum 119B at 1:00 p.m.

Cathleen E. Jones, Ph.D. | Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

Dr. Cathleen Jones is a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where her main research is focused on using radar remote sensing for studying natural disasters and monitoring critical infrastructure like levees and dams. She received a  B.S. in physics from Texas A&M and a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology, after which she spent many years doing experimental nuclear physics at Argonne National Lab and Caltech before changing fields to radar science and engineering in 2004. Currently, she is Principal Investigator on NASA and DHS- funded pilot projects to develop methods to detect and quantify levee deformation, seepage, and general subsidence rates using radar remote sensing, a study that has focused on monitoring the levees in  the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and in the New Orleans area. In addition she was Principal Investigator for the UAVSAR Deepwater Horizon oil spill campaign, which assessed the capability of radar for mapping oil characteristics and oil impact to the Gulf coast marshlands, and has done pioneering work on using radar interferometry to detect and monitor sinkholes.