Research Geophysicist
CurrentResearch Geophysicist, Project Chief and Task Leader “High-Precision Continuous Deformation Monitoring in California and Hawaii” in the Crustal Deformation Project, funded by the USGS Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. Many (56) sites, with all or various 3-component borehole dilatometer (19) or tensor strainmeter (12), 3-component seismic velocity and acceleration sensors (32), a pore pressure transducers (9), 2-component borehole tiltmeters (80, others in Hawaii, Philippines), magnetometers (35 in California others in China (1979-1999) and GPS receivers (5) have been installed in 200-m deep boreholes near along the San Andreas, Hayward and Rodgers Creek faults in the San Francisco Bay Area, Long Valley Caldera, Hawaii, Central California near San Juan Bautista and in the Parkfield area, Southern California across the Transverse Ranges and in the 3.6 km deep Tau Tona mine in South Africa. This effort has two parts: – Operations. Skills include system design, construction, maintenance, trouble shooting, repair, high speed digital transmission, satellite data telemetry, real-time Web data display, data archiving, etc. A program for monitoring high resolution seismic velocity, acceleration, strain fault displacement, electric field, temperature, etc was installed at 3.5 km depths in the Tau Tona mine in South Africa in 2006 to determine the physics of failure of nearby earthquakes with M <-4.5 to M5. Volcano monitoring programs (New Zealand, Japan, Philippines, Mount St Helens, Long Valley).– Analysis, Interpretation and Modeling. I conduct research into: [A] Real-time monitoring of the mechanics of failure of active faults and volcanoes using the variety of dilational strain, tensor strain, linear strain, magnetometer, tilt, differential lake level and fault creep instruments available, (B) develop physical models describing crustal failure from the analysis of data from these instruments and (C) attempt to determine the physics of the earthquake source.
