SCEC Award Number 19133 View PDF
Proposal Category Workshop Proposal
Proposal Title Workshop Support to Explore the Geological Fingerprints of Slow Slip and Tremor
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
John Platt University of Southern California Whitney Behr Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (Switzerland) Melodie French Rice University Greg Hirth Brown University Jamie Kirkpatrick McGill University (Canada) Christie Rowe McGill University (Canada) David Schmidt University of Washington
Other Participants Ake Fagereng, Cardiff University
SCEC Priorities 3b, 3d, 1d SCEC Groups Seismology, FARM
Report Due Date 01/31/2022 Date Report Submitted 06/28/2022
Project Abstract
 The Penrose Conference took place on April 1-5, 2022 at the Wrigley Center on Pimu (Catalina Island). Visits to the outcrops of blueschist, greenschist, and amphibolite-facies highly deformed rocks in intentionally mixed-disciplinary van groups resulted in lively discussion and debates. The geologists were hard pressed to convince experimentalists and numerical modelers of how the complicated web of shear surfaces, veins, block-in-matrix fabrics, cleavages, and reaction zones would have formed and over what time intervals. Likewise, geologists pressed the geophysicists on their confidence intervals for measurables (spatial scale, depth, duration of slow earthquakes and associated low frequency earthquakes) which revealed less uniformity amongst different scientists than previously assumed. The group identified a number of problems requiring interdisciplinary discussion and knowledge to advance the science and are assembling cross-disciplinary teams to write a series of linked papers (probable Geosphere special volume as the Geological Society of America has the first right of refusal). Seven papers are tentatively planned. We thank SCEC for the support and especially the patience and tenacity to help us see this effort to a successful event through pandemic-related delays.
Intellectual Merit Geological observations are critical for informing the physical processes that operate at the sources of slow earthquakes in order to develop relevant experiments, define the important physics to be incorporated in numerical models, and to ground-truth the geophysical data. Through a coordinated program of research dissemination and discussion, and debate in the field at a site that exemplifies the opportunities available to field geology, this conference will stimulate contributions from geological-focused investigators and geophysicists with a range of backgrounds to define key unknowns and debate possible models.
Broader Impacts The broader impacts of this proposal come under two headings. First, we have prioritized early career scientists as invited speakers, to give them and their work prominence, and also because they are most likely to be applying cutting-edge techniques in their research and to provide new approaches and ideas to the problems of slow earthquakes. Second, this conference is intended to stimulate fundamental new research directions about seismogenesis, particularly in subduction zone settings, which pose the most severe seismic and tsunami hazards faced by the global population.
Exemplary Figure Group Photo