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Could Western Washington see a similar earthquake to Morocco? | FOX 13
Monday, September 11, 2023
An earthquake devastated Marrakech, Morocco over the weekend--and Western Washington is no stranger to these seismological events. Harold Tobin, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and professor of earth and space sciences at the UW, is interviewed about seismic risks in the two places, and about a new research center that will study Pacific Northwest earthquakes. Read More -
Feds award $15M for new cutting-edge research center to study Pacific NW earthquakes | GeekWire
Monday, September 11, 2023
The National Science Foundation announced the creation of the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center. The $15 million facility will be based at the University of Oregon and the UW will be a lead partner. Harold Tobin, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and professor of earth and space sciences at the UW, is quoted. Read More -
UW a lead partner on new NSF-funded earthquake research center
Friday, September 8, 2023
The University of Washington is a lead partner on a new multi-institution earthquake research center based at the University of Oregon that the National Science Foundation announced Sept. 8 will receive $15 million over five years to study the Cascadia subduction zone and bolster earthquake preparedness in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
A tsunami evacuation sign along Washington’s coast.Rob Witter/USGS
National Science Foundation: “NSF announces two awards for earthquake research centers“The Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center, or CRESCENT, will be the first center of its kind in the nation focused on earthquakes at subduction zones, where one tectonic plate slides beneath another.
The center will unite scientists studying the possible impacts of a major earthquake along the Cascadia subduction zone, an offshore tectonic plate boundary that stretches more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from southern British Columbia to Northern California. The center will advance earthquake research, foster community partnerships, and diversify and train the next generation geosciences work force.
"The main goal of the center is to bring together the large group of geoscientists working in Cascadia to march together to the beat of a singular drum," said center director Diego Melgar at the University of Oregon. "The center organizes us, focuses collaboration and identifies key priorities, rather than these institutions competing."
CRESCENT includes researchers from 16 institutions around the United States in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The leadership team includes investigators from the UW, Oregon State University and Central Washington University.
The Cascadia subduction zone has a long history of spurring large earthquakes, but scientists have only started to realize its power within the last few decades. Research shows that the fault is capable of producing an earthquake of magnitude-9.0 or greater -- and communities along the U.S. West Coast are ill-prepared for a quake this powerful.
Such an event would set off a cascade of deadly natural hazards in the Cascadia region, from tsunamis to landslides. It could cause buildings and bridges to collapse, disrupt power and gas lines, and leave water supplies inaccessible for months.
CRESCENT's work can help mitigate that damage. Scientists will use the latest technology -- including high-performance computing and artificial intelligence -- to understand the complex dynamics of a major subduction zone earthquake. They will gather data and develop tools to better forecast specific local and regional impacts from a quake. That knowledge will help communities to better prepare, by improving infrastructure and nailing down more informed emergency plans.
Valerie Sahakian and Amanda Thomas are co-lead investigators at the University of Oregon.
"Modeling the shaking from California to Canada is a gigantic endeavor," Sahakian said. "The center enables us to make bigger strides in models, products, and lines of research, to work with engineers to create better building codes and actionable societal outcomes."
The arrows show the velocity, or speed and direction, of movement at GPS stations in the Cascadia region. The black arrow at the lower left is for scale, showing 2 inches (5 cm) per year.Brendan Crowell/University of Washington
Subduction zones in the U.S. are understudied compared to other kinds of faults, and create distinctive earthquake dynamics that still aren't fully understood, Melgar said. So the lessons learned from CRESCENT's work could also be applied to subduction zones in Alaska, the Caribbean and around the world.
Community collaboration will be a major part of the center's work. The CRESCENT team will work with communities impacted by hazards, regularly soliciting their input to guide research priorities. And they'll build connections with public agencies, tribal groups, and private industry, so that scientific advances from the center will get translated into community action and policy.
The center will also work to increase diversity in geosciences and train the next generation of geoscientists in the latest technologies. For example, it will engage with minority-serving and tribal high schools to raise interest in and create pathways to geoscience careers, and provide fieldwork stipends and year-round paid research assistantships to support undergraduate students.
Harold Tobin, a professor of Earth and space sciences at the UW and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, leads the effort at the UW.
"This NSF Center will be a game-changer for earthquake research in the Pacific Northwest; it will have direct, real-world public safety consequences for policy and planning," said Tobin, who holds the Paros Endowed Chair in Seismology and Geohazards and serves as Washington’s state seismologist.
"Initial CRESCENT efforts include identifying key faults -- both on land and under the sea -- that present earthquake and tsunami hazard, measuring and modeling movements of the crust that could show us where earthquake strain is building, and much more."
Brendan Crowell, a research assistant professor of Earth and space sciences at the UW, will lead the working group studying seismic activity and slow slip, the more gradual movements along a fault.
"The end goal is to have a community-driven model that describes all of the tectonic structures of Cascadia," Crowell said. "The objective of CRESCENT is about creating systematic and foundational community science, adapting the best techniques and methods available for use by the seismic community in our region. It will change the process of how we do this science."
Also initially involved from the UW are Cailey Condit, an assistant professor of Earth and space sciences; David Schmidt, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences; and William Wilcock, a professor of oceanography who holds the Jerome M. Paros Endowed Chair in Sensor Networks.
The center will include staff at the U.S. Geological Survey, including affiliate UW faculty members Erin Wirth, Joan Gomberg and Alex Grant, and members of the UW-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, which will continue to perform real-time monitoring and communication of seismic risks in the region.
For more information, contact Tobin at htobin@uw.edu or 206-543-6790, Crowell at crowellb@uw.edu and Melgar at dmelgarm@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3488.
Adapted from a University of Oregon press release.
Other CRESCENT participating institutions are:
Cal Poly Humboldt
Cedar Lake Research Group
EarthScope Consortium
Portland State University
Purdue University
Smith College
Stanford University
University of California – San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of North Carolina-Wilmington
Virginia Tech
Washington State University
Western Washington University
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ESS Field Camp Relocates to Washington
Thursday, August 31, 2023
For many ESS students, the summer field geology course is a mind-expanding opportunity to confront the complexity of geologic systems face-to-face. It is an opportunity to integrate concepts and techniques from core courses and apply them to “full strength” geologic problems. Covid-19 and restructuring of the UW summer budget both disrupted ESS’s long tradition of field training in Montana, driving us to consider a Seattle-based field course. The course combines skill-development in field observations and mapping with geophysics, engineering geology, geographic information systems (GIS) and report-writing. The newly-designed course, Pacific Northwest Field Geology with GIS (ESS 401), follows the traditional intensive six week format, minus the logistics of transplanting students and faculty to Montana. The course draws from the spectacular geology of western Washington: measuring section in the glacial stratigraphy; landslide mapping in the field and using lidar-derived topographic maps; bedrock mapping in the Lopez Structural Complex; geologic mapping in the Naches Formation near Snoqualmie Pass; a structural interpretation of the Chuckanut Mountains south of Bellingham, including a down-plunge projection of the folds; and a gravity survey and cross section from geotechnical boring logs across the Seattle Fault Zone. Working locally has additional benefits. Because we have access to department computer labs throughout the course, students can build projects with GIS fully integrated, so each project interleaves field and lab work. Because we can draw on our local contacts, we are able to engage professional geologists outside UW to meet with students in the field and highlight the career-relevance of the coursework. Students build expertise in the local geology and geologic data sources, further advancing their preparation for geology jobs in our region. And the locally-hosted camp means that students with family or other obligations that prevent them from traveling can fully participate in this important capstone experience. This benefit extends to faculty and to graduate teaching assistants: we expect to have a growing roster of faculty instructors who participate in the summer course, because they will no longer have to leave their families (or their laboratories) behind. Many people were involved in creating this new course, including Professors Juliet Crider, Steven Walters, Cailey Condit, Darrel Cowan, and Alison Duvall, and graduate students Elizabeth Davis, Erich Herzig, Max Needle and Paul Morgan. ESS graduate students Tristan Bench, Jonathan Gates, and Emma Heitmann helped ensure that the first offerings of the course ran smoothly. The ESS Summer Field Course remains an important and transformative capstone experience for students. The new format enables ESS to make a continued commitment to field training, while enhancing access for students. Read More -
The mineral talc may host slow earthquakes during subduction in Mexico | AGU's EOS
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Newly published work from UW shows that chemical transformations during subduction play a central role in the mechanical behavior of the faults that accommodate motion between the subducting and overriding tectonic plates. Talc, a water-rich and very weak mineral, may host slow earthquakes during subduction, like those observed in the Cascadia subduction zone in Washington, as well as where the Cocos Plate subducts beneath Mexico. Recent work by PhD student Peter Lindquist, with ESS Assistant Professor Cailey Condit, ESS NSF Postdoctoral Fellow Will Hoover, and collaborators David Hernandez-Uribe and Victor Guevara, was featured in AGU's EOS magazine, and revealed the magnitude of these chemical transformations (e.g., metamorphic dehydration and metasomatism) we might expect during subduction beneath Mexico. In this study, which was published in AGU's Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems journal in August 2023, Lindquist et al. modeled how much of the mineral talc would be produced when fluids released by metamorphic reactions in the Cocos plate interact with rocks at the subduction fault (plate interface) beneath Mexico. Lindquist's results predict enough talc production to host slow earthquakes, which are observed in this subduction zone, but not enough talc to explain the seismic observations of a low velocity zone at the plate interface that has previously been interpreted as the result of a 4 km thick zone of talc-rich rocks. This work shows how important it is to take into account chemical transformations like metamorphism and metasomatism when thinking about the slip behaviors of seismogenic faults and subduction zones. Read More -
Punch a hole in a planet | New Scientist - 'Dead Planets Society' podcast
Monday, August 14, 2023
In this episode of Dead Planets Society, the hosts embark on a boring journey -- as in, they literally contemplate trying to bore through a planet. Baptiste Journaux, research assistant professor in Earth and space sciences at the UW, is interviewed. Read More -
Earthquake felt by hundreds near Fall City | Northwest News Radio
Wednesday, August 9, 2023
An earthquake measured at 3.8 in magnitude woke a lot of people up at 3:17 a.m. The earthquake was felt by hundreds of people all across western Washington. Harold Tobin, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and professor of Earth and space sciences at the UW, is quoted. Read More -
Did you feel it? 3.9-magnitude earthquake shakes people awake near Fall City | KIRO 7
Wednesday, August 9, 2023
A 3.9-magnitude earthquake awakened people near Fall City Tuesday morning, with several aftershocks afterward. The initial quake at 3:17 a.m. was felt by people in Fall City, Snoqualmie, Carnation, and North Bend. Harold Tobin, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and professor of Earth and space sciences at the UW, is quoted. Read More -
Greenland was smaller (perhaps much smaller) about 400,000 years ago
Friday, July 21, 2023
A new study in Science co-led by ESS alum Paul Bierman, along with ESS chair Eric Steig, provides the first definitive evidence of a smaller-than-present Greenland ice sheet during Marine Isotope Stage 11, about 400,000 years ago. The team, which includes a dozen international laboratories, used long-forgotten sediment samples from the first ice core ever retrieved, from Camp Century in NW Greenland. Read More -
How geoscientists are making their field more welcoming
Monday, June 26, 2023
Nature spoke to five researchers spearheading programs that they hope will make geosciences a more welcoming space. ESS professor Juliet Crider's work to make more inclusive field experience is highlighted. Read More