Events

Speaker: Zhe Jia, Green Postdoctoral Scholar, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Host: Thorsten Becker

Title: Adventures in unraveling earthquake source complexities and the implications to earthquake physics and hazard mitigation

Abstract: A major challenge in earthquake science is to resolve and comprehend the complexity of earthquake ruptures. These complexities compound earthquakes’ unpredictability and destructive potential. Leveraging advancements in earthquake imaging techniques and multi-geophysical modeling, I show how we quantify earthquake rupture complexities, including recent examples as the 2021 South Sandwich Island earthquake sneaking through subduction interface, the 2019 Ridgecrest, California earthquakes interlocked in continent, and the 2023 Turkey earthquake doublet cascading across a strike-slip plate boundary. These examples show how far earthquakes and their hazards can go beyond our expectation.

I further investigate some key factors controlling these complexities, including fault geometry and pressure/temperature conditions. Using rupture characteristics of numerous small earthquakes, we can now determine high resolution fault geometries without seeing a large event rupture the surface. Additionally, we find temperature and pressure control global large deep earthquake characteristics by gating their mechanism transition from shearing to melting. Explorations on earthquake complexities and controlling factors help bridge theoretical and empirical understanding of earthquakes, and provide insights on the Earth’s multi-scale dynamic processes as well.