Episodes
Taiyi Wang, Stanford University All instrumented basaltic caldera collapses generate Mw > 5 very long period earthquakes. However, previous studies of source dynamics have been limited to lumped models treating the caldera block as rigid, leaving open questions related to how ruptures initiate and propagate around the ring fault, and the seismic expressions of those rupture dynamics. In the first part of my talk, I will present the first 3D numerical model capturing the...
Published 03/20/24
Shinji Toda, Tohoku University The 1 Jan 2024 Noto Hanto earthquake launched a plethora of ills on the Noto Hanto population, taking 200 lives, and causing $25B in damage, only $5B of which was insured. These ills include a tsunami that arrived within a few minutes of the mainshock, as well as unexpectedly strong shaking throughout the Noto peninsula. In addition to direct shaking damage, the shaking triggered massive landslides in steep terrain, and caused extensive...
Published 03/13/24
Mong-Han Huang, University of Maryland The Ross Ice Shelf (RIS) in Antarctica is the largest ice shelf in the world. As the RIS flows toward the Ross Sea, a buildup of tensile stress due to increasing ice flow velocity develops a series of flow-perpendicular rift zones. Although these rifts are essential in contributing to future calving and reduction in size of the ice shelf, their material properties and mechanical response to external stress in the rift zone scale (~10-100 km)...
Published 03/06/24
Peter Shearer, University of California, San Diego Similar-sized earthquakes vary in the strength of their high-frequency radiation and various modeling assumptions can be used to translate these differences into stress-drop estimates. Empirical methods are widely applied to correct earthquake spectra for path effects in order to estimate corner frequencies and stress drops, but suffer from tradeoffs among model parameters that hamper estimates of absolute stress drop and...
Published 02/28/24
Toño Bayona, University of Bristol The Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP) is a global community of scientists whose mission is to advance earthquake predictability research though the rigorous and prospective evaluation of probabilistic seismicity forecasts. One of CSEP’s major international achievements is the development and operation of dozens of time-varying and time-invariant seismicity models for California, including various versions of the...
Published 02/21/24
Jack W. Baker, Stanford University The amplitude of ground shaking during an earthquake varies spatially, due to location-to-location differences in source features, wave propagation, and site effects. These variations have important impacts on infrastructure systems and other distributed assets. This presentation will provide an overview of efforts to quantify spatial correlations in amplitudes, via observations from past earthquakes and numerical simulations. Regional risk...
Published 02/14/24
Emily Mongold, Stanford University The impact of liquefaction on a regional scale is not well understood or modeled with traditional approaches. This paper presents a method to quantitatively assess liquefaction hazard and risk on a regional scale, accounting for uncertainties in soil properties, groundwater conditions, ground shaking parameters, and empirical liquefaction potential index (LPI) equations. The regional analysis is applied to a case study to calculate regional...
Published 01/24/24
(1) Susan Hough, (2) Kate Hutton, (1) U.S. Geological Survey, (2) Caltech (retired) On the 30th anniversary of the 17 January 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake, we present a retrospective overview of an earthquake that had an enormous, multi-faceted impact in the greater Los Angeles area. In this two-part seminar, retired Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton first discusses the response to the earthquake by the (then) Southern California Seismic Network, which found itself...
Published 01/17/24
Sarah Minson, U.S. Geological Survey There are many underdetermined geophysical inverse problems. For example, when we try to infer earthquake fault slip, we find that there are many potential slip models that are consistent with our observations and our understanding of earthquake physics. One way to approach these problems is to use Bayesian analysis to infer the ensemble of all potential models that satisfy the observations and our prior knowledge. In Bayesian analysis, our...
Published 01/10/24
(1) Stephen Wu, (2) Keisuke Yano, Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan (1) Since 2021, the Seismology TowArd Research innovation with data of Earthquake (STAR-E) project has been established by the Japanese government to promote interdisciplinary research between data science and seismology. Five proposals have been accepted to be the core projects of STAR-E and EEW has become a sub-project in one of the selected projects. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the...
Published 12/08/23
(1) Rachel Abercrombie, (2) Annemarie Baltay, (1) Boston University, (2) U.S. Geological Survey In 2021 we launched the Community Stress Drop Validation Study, focused on the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake, California, sequence, using a common dataset. The broad aim of the collaboration is to improve the quality of estimates of stress drop and related fundamental earthquake source parameters (corner frequency, source duration, etc.) and their uncertainties, to enable more reliable...
Published 12/06/23
Heather Crume, California Geological Survey Surface creep has been documented on the San Andreas fault (SAF) since the 1960s. From Parkfield in the southeast to San Juan Bautista (SJB) in the northwest, the SAF is largely creeping and accommodating most of the ~38 mm/year right-lateral plate motion. The SJB section of the SAF lies at the northwest boundary of the central creeping section, forming a creeping-to-locked transition. These transition sections are known to be potential...
Published 11/29/23
Shuo Ma, San Diego State University One crucial yet unanswered question about the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake and tsunami is what generated the largest tsunami (up to 40 m) along the Sanriku coast north of 39°N without large slip near the trench. A minimalist dynamic rupture model with wedge plasticity is presented to address this issue. The model incorporates the important variation of sediment thickness along the Japan Trench into the Japan Integrated Velocity Structure Model...
Published 11/15/23
Artemii Novoselov, Stanford University This seminar introduces PhaseHunter, a deep learning framework initially designed for the precise estimation and uncertainty quantification of seismic phase onset times. Building upon this foundational capability, PhaseHunter has evolved to handle a broader range of seismic applications through a probabilistic deep learning regression approach. This enables the framework to analyze both continuous and binary properties of seismic signals,...
Published 11/08/23
James Neely, University of Chicago Commonly used large earthquake recurrence models have two major limitations. First, they predict that the probability of a large earthquake stays constant or even decreases after it is “overdue” (past the observed average recurrence interval), so additional accumulated strain does not make an earthquake more likely. Second, they assume that the probability distribution of the time between earthquakes is the same over successive earthquake...
Published 11/01/23
Zhiang Chen, California Institute of Technology The intricate and dynamic nature of fault zones and fragile geological features has long fascinated geoscientists and researchers. Understanding these geological phenomena is crucial not only for scientific exploration but also for hazard assessment and resource management. Recently, the convergence of robotics and machine learning has given rise to a transformative practice called automated geoscience. This practice utilizes...
Published 10/25/23
Ryley Hill, San Diego State University Both natural and anthropogenic hydrologic loads have been associated with stimulating seismicity. However, there are few documented examples that hydrologic loads can trigger large earthquakes. The southern San Andreas Fault (SSAF) in Southern California lies next to the Salton Sea, a successor of ancient Lake Cahuilla that periodically filled and desiccated over the past millennium. Here we use new geologic and paleoseismic data to...
Published 09/06/23
Kelian Dascher-Cousineau, University of California, Berkeley Seismology is witnessing explosive growth in the diversity and scale of earthquake catalogs. A key motivation for this community effort is that more data should translate into better earthquake forecasts. In this presentation, I report on recent works in 1) improving aftershock forecasts, 2) investigating the seismic triggering potential of slow slip events, and 3) introducing deep learning methods for earthquake...
Published 08/30/23
Christie Rowe, McGill University Earthquake recurrence in time and space is recorded in the rock record (deep/ long term) and sedimentary record (shallow/recent). Mechanistic understandings of earthquakes have not so far made a major contribution to forecasting but this could represent an area of scientific potential growth. In this talk I will review recent progress on understanding controls on the earthquake cycle from structural studies in the rock record. I will focus on...
Published 08/23/23
Jessica Murray, U.S. Geological Survey
Published 08/16/23
Chris Milliner, California Institute of Technology Understanding the mechanics of faulting and accurately assessing seismic hazards are crucial for mitigating the impact of earthquakes. This seminar investigates the use of satellite pixel tracking data to unravel fundamental geomechanical properties of fault systems by providing novel estimates of friction, the absolute magnitude of stresses in the Earth's crust and evolution of inelastic strain as fault systems mature. Here, I...
Published 08/09/23
Karl Kappler, QuakeFinder Short term (days to hours) earthquake forecasting is a hard scientific problem. Monitoring electromagnetic (EM) rather than mechanical/seismic activity may provide a breakthrough in this research. Anecdotal EM studies of single earthquakes lack of reproducible observations, and non-uniqueness of the anomalies when data are examined over the long term. However, in the early 2000s, a private humanitarian effort (QuakeFinder) was established to address the...
Published 08/02/23
Rishav Mallick, California Institute of Technology Viscoelastic processes in the upper mantle redistribute seismically generated stresses and modulate crustal deformation throughout the earthquake cycle. Geodetic observations of these motions at the surface of the crust-mantle system offer the possibility of constraining the rheology of the upper mantle. Parsimonious representations of viscoelastically modulated deformation through the aseismic phase of the earthquake cycle...
Published 07/26/23
Itzhak Lior, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is revolutionizing observational seismology by allowing for seismic measurement every few meters along tens-of-kilometers long optical fibers. One application bearing immense scientific and societal implications is the use of DAS for Earthquake Early Warning (EEW). For optimal warning times, seismic sensors should be installed as close as possible to expected earthquake sources. However, while the...
Published 07/19/23
Margaret Glasgow, U.S. Geological Survey Fluid-injection induced seismicity has been ongoing for more than two decades in the Raton Basin, a coal-bed methane field located on the Colorado-New Mexico border. The uptick in seismicity began in 2001 approximately 10 years ahead of the central United States average. Sparse seismic instrumentation existed prior to 2015. Prior to denser instrumentation beginning in 2016, three broad zones of seismicity were identified. Each zone was...
Published 07/12/23