The Earthquake Seismology research group studies earthquakes using a variety of techniques in order to gain a deeper understanding of how earthquakes work and what their consequences might be. Current research areas include high-precision earthquake location, the earthquake energy budget, earthquake scaling, tectonic tremor, triggered tremor, slow earthquakes, earthquake detection, source imaging, stochastic source characterization, and strong ground motion prediction using the ambient seismic field.

In our Research area, we develop the science and technology that could lead to a global energy system with significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve this, GCEP is building a diverse portfolio of innovative, step-out technologies. GCEP is organized around a range of research areas that will be considered over the course of the Project, and we currently have numerous research activities taking place at Stanford and at collaborating institutions around the world. GCEP will continue to add programs in current and other research areas.

The Stanford Radio Glaciology research group focuses on the subglacial and englacial conditions of rapidly changing ice sheets and the use of ice penetrating radar to study them and their potential contribution to the rate of sea level rise.

The Stanford Exploration Project (SEP) is an industry-funded academic consortium whose purpose is to improve the theory and practice of constructing 3-D and 4-D images of the earth from seismic echo soundings. Although most of our research is targeted at improvements in the geophysical survey contracting industry, about half of our sponsors and alumni are in the petroleum industry because we focus on overcoming technological limitations of the geophysical survey industry. SEP pioneered innovations in migration imaging, velocity estimation, dip moveout and slant stack. Today our focus is on 3-D seismic applications such as velocity estimation, wavefield-continuation prestack migration, multidimensional image estimation, and 4-D (time-lapse) reservoir monitoring. Besides 3-D reflection seismic data, we undertake small 2-D imaging projects with geophysical data of all kinds. The diversity of applications exercises our judgment and skill at combining fundamentals of statistical signal theory, optimization theory, numerical analysis, and wave propagation theory, and this has led us to numerous improvements and some breakthroughs. We organize our research to facilitate technology transfer by using a formal method of makefile rules. With these, most of our research results are verified by someone other than the original researcher. Research progress reports at least three years old and all PhD theses are made available to the public through our web site.

The research at the Stanford Rock Physics Laboratory focuses on experiments designed to understand the connections between geophysical properties measured at the surface of the Earth or within boreholes with the intrinsic properties of rocks – i.e., mineralogy, porosity, pore fluids, stress conditions, and the overall rock architecture such as laminations, fractures, and the intricate pore network.

The Stress and Crustal Mechanics group uses knowledge of the state of stress in the Earthand the mechanical properties of Earth materials to investigate a variety of geophysicalproblems. These problems cover a variety of scales, ranging from pore scale processes and themechanical behavior of reservoir-scale faults, to the strength of the lithosphere and the mechanics of major plate bounding faults such as the San Andreas.