Geology Department Colloquium, Nov. 15th

Title: “Great Earthquakes and Great datasets”

Please join us: Thursday, November 15th @ 11AM in Edmunds 130

Abstract: Great and mega-earthquakes have been arguably more prevalent in the last decade than in the preceding few decades. This coincides in time with the near real-time availability of high quality and densely sampled seismic data from arrays such as the USArray Transportable Array Observatory are shedding new light on the spatial and temporal characteristics of earthquake rupture processes. The ability of the seismological community to rapidly and accurately characterize such events has consequently improved over the same period of time, and geoscientists are now regularly served with detailed source characteristics of a recent earthquake within several hours of the event occurring.

Magnitude is a commonly known but limited way of characterizing the size of an earthquake. Seismic moment and fault rupture models are physical quantities that better characterize the tectonic significance and societal hazards of earthquakes. I will review these and other characterizations of earthquake source processes and discuss some of the fascinating results from the Mw9.0 Tōhoku Japan earthquake on 11 March 2011 and the remarkable Mw8.6 and Mw8.2 Northern Sumatran earthquake pair of 11 April 2012.

 How can you avail yourself of these results? Raw seismic data as well as an ever-expanding portfolio of end user data products are made available by the IRIS Consortium Data Management System. I will demonstrate some of the tools available to access this data and some of the exciting data products that are now available to the geoscientific community.