Earth Matters: What “Virtual Earthquakes” Can Tell Us About the Big One
- Code:
- EVT 936
- Day:
- Wednesday
- Date(s):
- May 11
- Time:
- 7:30 pm
- Location:
- TBA
- Cost:
- FREE
No Registration Required
Earth Matters is a quarterly public program co-sponsored by Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences and Stanford Continuing Studies. With the global population expected to exceed 9 billion people by 2050 and per capita consumption on the rise, the world faces an unprecedented challenge: meeting human needs for fresh water, food, and energy while protecting the planet’s ability to produce these essential resources for generations to come. This series addresses problems, facts, and myths; explains potential solutions; and engages the local community in a lively discussion.
What “Virtual Earthquakes” Can Tell Us About the Big One
Many seismologists believe that predicting the strength of shaking in future earthquakes is more important than predicting exactly when they will occur. That is because if we know how strong the ground will shake, buildings can be designed to withstand that shaking. But predicting the strength of shaking is challenging; large earthquakes are rare (fortunately), and we have few on-scale recordings of strong ground shaking. For that reason, seismologists are increasingly turning to computer simulations to fill the data gap. Many assumptions go into these simulations, and it’s important to test their accuracy.
In this talk, geophysicist Greg Beroza will present a new approach to predicting strong ground motion that relies on weak, background shaking that is present in the Earth at all times. This background shaking can be used to construct virtual earthquakes that help predict the strength and variability of future quakes, and improve our understanding of past seismic events.
Greg Beroza, Wayne Loel Professor of Geophysics, Stanford Greg Beroza has taught at Stanford since 1990. He is Deputy Director of the Southern California Earthquake Center, and Chair of the Advanced National Seismic System Steering Committee. Beroza received a PhD in geophysics from MIT.
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- Event Map