News

2023

I visited Univision News on May 11 and 12 to discuss the Almanor Lake earthquake sequence that was widely felt in the Sacramento area.
Undergraduate student at SCEC SOURCES intern Vanessa Herrera defended her undergraduate thesis on May 5th, presenting her research on fault bends. She will stay at San Diego State University for a masters in Geophysics.
I gave a seminar on my recent work on earthquake gates in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell on May 3rd.
I wrote a piece for Nature Reviews Earth & Environment highlighting the potential for repeat airborne lidar in earthquake and fault mechanics. You can read the article here. Big thanks to Chelsea Scott, Ramon Arrowsmith, and Mike Oskin for their edits and insights.
I attended the 2023 SSA Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I co-convened a session on fault damage and healing in the shallow crust, and presented my recent work on earthquake gates in a talk. SCEC SOURCES intern Vanessa Herrera also attended the meeting and delivered an excellent poster looking at the orientation of rupturing fault segments with respect to their regional stress field.
I wrote a Temblor article covering the April 1, 2023 Mw 4.2 earthquake in Southern California. The event was widely felt throughout San Diego and Los Angeles. I also wrote a Temblor article on the magnitude 4.4 event that rattled the Bay Area and the Salinas Valley on April 4, 2023.
I attended the 2023 SAGE/GAGE meeting in Pasadena. I learned the basics of GPS data processing in the GAMIT/GLOBK workshop and got to catch up with colleagues.
My research proposal "Quantifying the erasure of earthquakes from the landscape of Southern California: implications for hazard assessment and paleoseismology", coauthored with Prof. Ramon Arrowsmith (ASU) got selected to receive NEHRP funding. This award will support our ongoing collaboration.
Alayna Hudson and Makenna Pilchen will be working with me on mapping synthetic post-earthquake DEMs to understand the effect of surface processes in probabilistic fault displacement hazard analysis. They are both undergraduates in the Geology program at UC Davis and their research is part of an ongoing collaboration with Ramon Arroswmith at ASU.
Katie Hellman wrote a piece on my research for the California Aggie, UC Davis' student-run newspaper.
Greg Watry wrote a piece featuring some of my research and mentoring experience for the UC Davis College of Letters and Science. You can read the piece here. I really enjoyed my conversation with Greg leading up to this story.

2022

On Tuesday December 20 I gave an interview in Univision Sacramento in Spanish discussing the earthquake in Humboldt County and the local seismic hazard to the broader Sacramento area.
At the 2022 AGU Fall Meeting I convened two sessions on fault maturity and structural complexity and gave an invited talk on some new work looking at the passing probabilities of different earthquake gates and how these condition the maximum magnitude an earthquake may grow to. Abstract here.
Congratulations to SDSU undergraduate and SCEC SOURCES intern Vanessa Herrera for receiving an AGU travel grant! You can learn more about Vanessa's SCEC-supported research on earthquake gates here.
On October 26, I went on Tiktok as part of a series that introduces the SCEC Community in the platform.
On October 18, I was a speaker on the Hewett Club Speaker Series at UC Riverside, where I gave a one hour seminar on my work on inelastic deformation in fault zones.
On October 6, I was invited to speak alongside Chelsea Scott and Josie Nevitt at the Community Near-Fault Observatory Breakout Session on Spatial Variations of Rock Properties and Deformation Processes Across Rupture Zones. You can watch the webinar here.
I was part of the SCEC delegation at the UJNR meeting in Anchorage, Alaska from September 26-29. The meeting was an opportunity to learn about the earthquake-related work American and Japanese colleagues working for government agencies are conducting. I also got to present my work on probabilistic displacement hazard assessment.
I gave the Berkeley Seismo Lab seminar on September 20. It was great to meet with students and faculty and hear about their recent work.
I appeared in the Univision news in Sacramento discussing the local seismic hazard and what to do in case of an earthquake in Spanish. You can see a clip here!
I presented my work on developing a framework for probabilistic displacement hazard analysis that accounts for widespread and my work characterizing folding around normal faults at the SCEC Annual Meeting. I was great to reconnect with colleagues in person.
SCEC SOURCES summer interns Vanessa Herrera (SDSU), Sophia White (UCLA), and Mercedes Quitana (PCC) will be extending their research projects into the Fall supported by the SCEC SOURCES extension. The three of them will present their posters at the 2022 SCEC Annual Meeting in Palm Springs in September.
I participated in the IRIS Seismology Skill Building Workshop for Undergraduates webinar series sharing advice and information for navigating grad school applications and grad school as an international student in the United States.
I attended the Gordon Research Conference in Rock Deformation in August 2022. I gave a talk during the student research seminar and presented a poster during the general conference on my recent work on quantifying permanent distributed strain accumulated over multiple earthquake cycles.
I gave the department seminar at ENS (Paris) on June 21. I really enjoyed discussing my work with experimentalists and dynamic rupture modelers. It is exciting to see how far the off-fault damage community goes!
I spent 9 days at GFZ in Postdam in June, including a seminar talk on June 14. It has been nice to learn about the work my European colleagues are doing from landscape evolution to lithospheric dynamics.
I received a Student Presentation Award for my talk at the 2022 SSA Annual Meeting. Congratulations to the other awardees!
Undergraduate students Sophia White (Pasadena City College, soon to be at UCLA) and Vanessa Herrera (SDSU) will be working with me this summer as part of the SCEC SOURCES internship program. They will revisit the limiting characteristics of step-overs, gaps, and bends from the fault displacement hazard initiative rupture database. Mercedes Quintana (Pasadena City College), who has worked with me since summer 2021, will continue on as a SCEC SOURCES intern this summer working to automate fault displacement profile generation from digital elevation models. Learn more about student projects here.
On May 19 I presented my work on widespread fracturing and its implications for PFDHA on earthquakes in the Eastern California Shear Zone (ECSZ) to the NMHA Corps group of the USGS.
Undergraduate student and McNair scholar Lupita Bravo presented her research using post-earthquake lidar point clouds to measure near-field vertical displacements at the 2022 EPS Student Research Conference. Great job, Lupita!
On May 10 I presented my work on multi-fault earthquakes in Southern California at the USGS Earthquake Center Science Seminar.
Undergraduate student Mercedes Quintana presented her work using unsupervised cluster analysis to characterizing fractures from legacy rupture datasets in a poster at the SSA meeting. Mercedes in a SCEC SOURCES intern and will continue to work with me through summer 2022.
I presented my work on off-fault folding at the Volcanic Tablelands (CA) and my work on multi-fault earthquakes of the San Andreas and the San Jacinto faults through Cajon Pass (CA) at the SSA Annual Meeting. The Cajon Pass talk was part of a recorded session and can be accessed online by conference attendees.
Our paper attributing the CE 1711 earthquake to the Purgatorio fault in southern Peru instead of the megathrust just got accepted for publication in Tectonophysics. Link to the paper here. This is some of the work I did as an undergraduate at College of the Atlantic.
I gave the COMET+ webinar on April 6! Here's a link to the talk on Youtube.
I participated on the Structure and Deformation at Plate Boundaries workshop, an NSF GeoPRISMS workshop focused on the relationship between structure and deformation at rifts and subduction zones hosted at the University of Hawaii.
Our paper looking at widespread inelasticity from the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes using fracture maps, strain maps, and aftershocks is out in Nature Geoscience today! Check it out here.
I wrote a science communication piece for Temblor featuring our work on joint earthquake ruptures from the San Jacinto and the San Andreas faults. Give it a read here!
I will be convening a session on Fault Damage Zones at the SSA 2022 meeting with Travis Alongi (UCSC), Xiaohua Xu (UT Austin), and Tom Mitchell (UCL). Join us for a great session and discussion on quantitative and interdisciplinary research on Fault Damage Zones. Abstracts due January 12.
I presented my work on the distribution of inelastic deformation at the Earthquake Research Group, Geoazur (Nice, France) on January 11.

2021

I co-convened a panel discussion at the 2021 AGU Fall Meeting on the "Great Unsolved Questions in Tectonophysics". The discussion was widely attended by online and in-person participants and we had a lively discussion. The recording is available through the AGU Fall meeting app.
Our work on Cajon Pass, published in Geology, got featured in several media outlets (and several languages!) following this article by Andy Fell.
I presented our work on the distribution of surface rock damage from the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes at the 2021 AGU meeting. Here's a link to my talk on youtube.
On November 9-11, I attended the SCEC Community Geodetic Model workshop online. I am hoping to incorporate geodetic data into future projects!
Lupita Bravo is a 2021-2022 McNair Scholar and she will be working with Mike Oskin and I on measuring vertical displacements from post earthquake lidar point clouds using the lidar data from the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes as a case study. Welcome to the group, Lupita!
Mike Oskin and I presented our work on the Ridgecrest earthquakes to the Fault Displacement Hazard Initiative group at UCLA on October 19.
Our manuscript establishing the frequency and mechanics of co-rupture of the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults through Cajon Pass got accepted for publication in Geology. You can read more about it here.
Our manuscript mapping the Ridgecrest earthquakes from high-resolution imagery got accepted for publication in SRL. Congrats to the five SCEC SOURCES interns that participated in this project last summer. You can read more about it here.
I presented my work on quantifying permanent off-fault deformation using curvature at the SCEC 2021 meeting. Here's a link to the poster.
Congratulations to SCEC SOURCES interns Ruth Prado, Brian Aguilar, Tom Shea, and Michael Hernandez on finishing their summer research projects and big thanks to SCEC for supporting them. You can learn more about their work here and catch their poster presentations at the 2021 SCEC Meeting (abstracts linked to their names). Mercedes Quintana will continue working with us this Fall, analyzing legacy data from surface rupturing earthquakes in Southern California and Mexico.
Kimberly Bowman (BS Geology, 2020) is working on mapping the damage zones of recently active faults in southern Utah this summer. Her work will become part of a collaboration with other undergraduate students to understand the mechanics of creeping and seismogenic faults.
I have received a NASA FINESST fellowship to work on analyzing and modeling permanent deformation around faults to determine what constitutive law best describes stress dissipation by off-fault deformation over the earthquake cycle. This fellowship will fund the remaining of my PhD.
My presentation at the Seismological Society of America's Annual Meeting was awarded a Student Presentation Award, "which honors excellent poster or oral presentations. Nominated by meeting attendees, a three-person judging panel selected the 19 award recipients among the eligible pool of student presenters".
This summer, I will mentor five undergraduate students through the SCEC SOURCES mentorship program. Four students will work on mapping high-resolution aerial imagery from the Ridgecrest earthquake to establish the near-field kinematics of different portions of the rupture. Another student will work on the mechanics of damage associated with seismogenic and creeping faults.
I have received a Summer Graduate Student Researcher Award in Engineering and Computer Science from UC Davis. I am grateful to my department for the nomination.
I have been awarded a Durrell fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year from the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in UC Davis. This award is in recognition of academic accomplishments and the graduate program’s evaluation of potential for future achievement.
On May 26, I gave an invited lecture at my undergraduate institution, College of the Atlantic, on salt tectonics and fault creep in the Canyonlands National Park.
Our proposal to work on the damage zone of the Ridgecrest 2019 earthquakes was funded by SCEC!
I participated in the "Pathways to Grad School" panel organized by the AWG UC Davis Chapter in May 18th. This event is designed as an interactive session for undergraduate students in the department to learn about the different options for transitioning between undergraduate studies and graduate school.
I have been awarded a Durrell field award from the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UCD. The award will cover the cost of fieldwork to collect drone imagery of the 2010 El Mayor Cucapah earthquake (Baja California, Maxico) 10 years after the event.
Veronica Prush (McGill), Michele Cooke (UMass Amherst), Julian Lozos (CSU Northridge), and I convened a session on Earthquake Gates at the SSA Annual Meeting. Abstract here. Thank you to all the presenters! All oral presentations from the session are captioned and publicly available on Youtube.
I gave a talk titled "Beyond the Damage Zone: Characterizing Widespread Inelastic Deformation From Integrated Fracture, Aftershock and Strain Maps of the 2019 Ridgecrest Sequence" at the 2021 SSA Annual Meeting. Here's a link to the talk on Youtube.
Leslie Garcia (BS Geology, expected 2022) will be doing some research with me over the 2021 Spring quarter. She will be working on the near-field kinematics of the 2019 Ridgecrest sequence surface rupture.
I have accepted an invitation to serve as the student representative for the Tectonophysics section of the American Geophysical Union! I am looking forward to working with the other officers to keep pushing this interdisciplinary section forward.
I passed my Qualifying Exam on January 12th and I am now a PhD candidate! A good start to 2021.
Sierra Brinton is starting her BS in Geology (expected graduation 2024) and will be working with me through the AWG UC Davis chapter mentorship program. Sierra is excited to learn about research opportunities in the Earth Sciences. Yvonne Leon is a Junior in the Geology program and is also working with me through the AWG mentorship program. Yvonne is excited about earthquakes and geophysics in general.

2020

Our proposal for incorporating the role of stress dissipation by off-fault deformation into Probabilistic Fault Displacement Hazard Analysis was selected for funding by PG&E. We will be incorporating lidar data and numerical modeling to understand off-fault deformation in the Hat Creek Graben (CA) and its evolution over time.
Undergraduate mentee Sofia Marino graduated with her B.S. in Geology. Her undergraduate thesis was awarded a Provost Fellowship and she presented her results at the Undergraduate Research Symposium at UC Davis and at the 2020 SCEC Annual Meeting. We will miss her in the lab!
I presented my work on the time-dependent evolution of off-fault deformation at the 2020 AGU Fall Meeting. You can check out the poster here. The cost of registration, virtual attendance, and computational equipment was covered by an AGU Student Travel Grant.
I have been selected as the student representative to the Open Topography Advisory Committee. I am looking forward to serving a 3 year term with the Open Topo team!
I presented recent work with collaborators Mike Oskin and Chris Milliner looking at the distribution of fractures and aftershocks surrounding the Ridgecrest earthquake main surface rupture at the SCEC 2020 meeting. Check out our poster and explanation videos here.
Sofia Marino presented her undergraduate thesis work looking at structures at fault tips at seismogenic and creeping faults at the SCEC 2020 meeting. Check out the poster here.
Elaine Young presented our lab group's work determining the reproducibility of remote-sensing-based maps for the Ridgecrest earthquake sequence at the SCEC 2020 meeting! Check out the poster and explanation videos here.
I gave an invited talk at the 2020 SCEC Cajon Pass Earthquake Gate Area: Progress and Future Plans workshop. I presented our recent work on the Lytle Creek Ridge Fault, an aseismic low angle normal fault that slips only in response to linked rupture of the San Andreas and the San Jacinto faults through Cajon Pass. We use paleoseismic trenching to constrain the number and timing of events that have bridged the step-over, and include slip measurements from the trench in a mechanical model that sheds light on the behavior of slip on the San Andreas and the San Jacinto in the 1812 and 1857 events. Read the abstract here and stay tuned for the publication!
I participated in UNAVCO's InSAR Processing and Time-Series Analysis for Geophysical Applications short course held online this summer. The amazing Jupyter Notebooks from the course are available for download in the course link, don't miss out!
New lidar available for the Needles District in Canyonlands National Park! This data was collected through an NCALM Seed Award. Access data from Open Topography
This summer the Oskin group will map the 2019 Ridgecrest surface rupture from inSAR and lidar data and compare it to the field measurements. Our goal is to constrain the resolution that remote mapping methods allow. This work is funded by this SCEC award.
Our proposal to continue working on understanding the paleoseismic history and mechanics of the Cajon Pass Earthquake Gate got funded by SCEC!
Sofia Marino presented her undergraduate thesis work looking at fracturing and folding patterns at fault tips at the 31st Annual Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Conference at UC Davis.
I received a Graduate Studies Award from UC Davis to cover computational costs for my PhD!
I spent winter quarter studying Earthquake Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as part of the intercampus UC program.
Sara Benavidez (BS Geology 2020) and I are paired through the AWG UC Davis chapter mentorship program. Sara is about to graduate with her BS in Geology and wants to be a high-school Math and Science teacher.

2019

I presented our work analyzing the time-dependent evolution of fault-related folding from high-resolution topography at AGU. The cost of attendance was covered by a UC Davis Graduate Student Association Travel Grant.
Sofia Marino will be working on an undergraduate thesis co-advised by Mike Oskin and myself. Her project Strain partitioning at fault tips has been selected as a recipient to the UC Davis Provost's Undergraduate Fellowship! We will be doing fieldwork at the Needles District in Canyonlands National Park next Fall.
I presented our work on the rupture timing and behavior through Cajon Pass at the SCEC Annual Meeting! We have compiled the first paleoseismic record with direct evidence of joint rupture between the San Andreas and the San Jacinto faults at Cajon Pass! We were able to constrain the timing of three events using radiocarbon dating and analysis of invasive pollen species. Using slip measurements from the trench, we were able to develop a slip model for ruptures on the Northern San Jacinto as they approach the step-over.
I spent a week at the UC Irvine Keck Carbon Observatory preparing my trench samples for C14 dating! I have learned a lot, including that I much prefer coding to lab work.
I attended the 2019 GMTSAR workshop at Scripps and made my first interferogram! The cost of attendance, food, and lodging were covered by UNAVCO, thank you!
I TAed the Neotectonics module for UC Davis summer field camp. We spent three days mapping the Hilton Creek Fault, glacial moraines, and surface deposits in the Eastern Sierras. We then spent two days analyzing the fault data in R and writing a geotechnical report. We also got to see the fresh surface ruptures from the July Ridgecrest Earthquake Sequence!
I have received funding from a GSA Student Research Grant to conduct research at the Needles District in Canyonlands National Park. This fieldwork is to be paired with remote landscape analysis of our Seed dataset for the area (see below).
I attended the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics' Crustal Deformation Modeling Workshop at the Colorado School of Mines. I made my first finite element meshes and successfully ran my first multifault finite element model! The costs for attendance and lodging were covered with NSF funding.
Mike Oskin, Tom Rockwell, Drake Singleton and I spent a couple weeks trenching the Lytle Creek Ridge Fault at Cajon Pass as part of this SCEC project. After all the hand digging we were rewarded with three large events with about a meter of slip each!
Our SCEC proposal to use surface vertical motions to study slip heterogeneity at depth got funded!
I am the recipient of a 2018 Seed Award by NCALM! They will collect 40 sqkm of lidar data from the Needles District in Canyonlands National Park, UT. The purpose of this dataset is to characterize distributed deformation around creeping faults, where stress levels are expected to be higher on average than at their seismogenic counterparts.
Daphne Kuta (BS Geology 2019) and I are paired as mentor and mentee for the academic year as part of the AWG UC Davis chapter mentorship program. Daphne is a senior doing research in the paleoclimate of California caves.