As the Ph.D. adviser of Dr. Xie Hu, I congratulate Xie for the 2022 AGU Natural Hazards Early Career Award for the innovative study of natural hazards using radar remote sensing and geophysical modeling. Xie received a B.S. in GIS from China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, in 2011 and an M.S. in remote sensing from Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, in 2013. She joined Southern Methodist University (SMU) in August 2014 to pursue a Ph.D. in geophysics with a focus on natural hazards studies using interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) observations and geophysical modeling. After Xie received her Ph.D. from SMU in 2018, she worked with Prof. Roland Bürgmann at the University of California, Berkeley as a postdoc during 2018–2020. After being an assistant professor at the University of Houston for 1 year, Xie joined the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University in 2021. Xie’s research focuses on using remote sensing data, especially InSAR, to characterize ground deformation and surface disturbance associated with natural hazards. She also has been engaged in investigating triggering mechanisms of natural hazards based on statistical, numerical, and analytical models, and artificial intelligence. Her interdisciplinary research spans the fields of natural hazards, geodesy, geophysics, geology, hydrology, civil and environmental engineering, and climate sciences. As an early-career scientist, Xie is already scientifically prolific in natural hazards studies. She published 20 papers in high-impact journals, including 13 first-authored ones. A glimpse into her research highlights includes the following: (1) quantifying surface deformation and inverting subsurface channel geometry/thickness and hydrogeological forcings of landslides; (2) unveiling and forecasting the decaying consolidation settlement of tailings impoundment and surface deformation associated with mountain excavation and city construction; (3) investigating stress perturbations and seismicity due to mining waste transfer and hydrological load changes, and diagnosing hydromechanical coupling in shallow crust during underground coal mining; (4) quantifying water storage cycles of aquifers and basin-wide hydrogeological properties by correlating seasonal displacements and groundwater levels; and (5) synergizing hydroclimatic, topographic, geological, and seismological data sets to characterize land motions and surface disturbance due to winter storms using machine learning. Xie is an early-career scientist of high diligence and intelligence and has demonstrated outstanding critical thinking and exceptional capability for frontier research. Xie is innovative in her scientific interests in a very broad range of natural and anthropogenic hazards using advanced tools and methods, and hence truly deserves the 2022 Natural Hazards Early Career Award. —Zhong Lu, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas

I feel truly honored to receive this AGU Natural Hazards Early Career Award. I am grateful to my advisers, mentors, and colleagues for their nomination and recognition in a common research field that I have been dedicated to for the past decade. Natural hazards generalize the environmental phenomena that put lives and property at risk. Everyone around the world is vulnerable to natural hazards. Research on natural hazards requires cross-disciplinary knowledge to bridge the gaps between observations and mechanisms, between risks and policies, and between engineering and science. Enlightened by the academic programs in geophysics, remote sensing, and GIS that I enrolled in and by numerous critical discussions with my advisers and colleagues, I was motivated to research natural hazards using remote sensing data and methods. My research has been relying on radar remote sensing and mathematical and physical models to elucidate the spatial and temporal ground deformation and land cover changes associated with natural hazards such as landslides, groundwater depletion, and extreme precipitation events. Beyond that, we also explore the role of geological and hydroclimatic variables as well as human activities in the timing, geographic locations, and triggering mechanisms of individual and cascading hazardous event(s). Like many early-career scientists in their thirties from different parts of the world, we are in an age with seemingly insurmountable challenges. This recognition from our field of professionals gives me enormous strength to keep moving forward. I will continue developing remote sensing methods and quantitative models to better understand the dynamic processes and mechanisms of natural hazards. As a junior faculty, I hope my teaching and advisership can help the younger generations gain a better understanding of natural hazards, motivate their knowledge-seeking behaviors, and develop their career paths in related fields. —Xie Hu, Peking University, Beijing