Science & Technology

Dangerous Ground: USU Geoscientist Awarded NSF Grant to Study Earthquake Precursors

Assistant Professor Srisharan Shreedharan leads collaborative effort to gain knowledge of processes that could improve seismic hazard forecasting.

By Mary-Ann Muffoletto |

Video by Taylor Emerson, Digital Journalist, University Marketing & Communications

You can see dark clouds forming in the distance and prepare for inclement weather. Hurricane forecasters can pinpoint storms as they develop over oceans, track their movement and offer reasonable predictions about where disturbance is headed, how strong it will grow and when it might strike.

Not so with earthquakes, says Utah State University geoscientist Srisharan Shreedharan.

“If you could see the precursors to an earthquake, you’d have to be able to see maybe a meter of rock, moving at less than a millimeter per second some 10-20 kilometers under our feet,” he says. “That isn’t possible with the naked eye.”

Despite decades of research and meticulous documentation of very small — millimeter-to-centimeter-scale — observations, Shreedharan says reliable, short-term earthquake forecasting remains elusive.

To address this challenge, he proposes scaling the wealth of data collected on millimeter-scale faults to the meter scale, using a custom-built, one-meter biaxial deformation “earthquake machine,” along with machine learning techniques. Shreedharan, leading this effort in collaboration with Gregory McLaskey of Cornell University, was awarded about $300,000 in funding, roughly half of the total award, from a three-year National Science Foundation Earth Sciences grant to pursue this approach.

“This apparatus will enable us to adapt seismic interrogation techniques previously used on centimeter-scale experiments to meter-scale deformation experiments, allowing us to observe more realistic representations of natural fault systems,” Shreedharan says. “This approach could offer significant improvements to earthquake forecasting and thereby improve efforts to mitigate seismic hazards.”

Shreedharan and his students, along with McLaskey, will use active source techniques to study the mechanics of pre- and post-seismic deformation on dry and fluid-saturated meter-scale faults.

“Our goals include exploring whether robust variations in seismic wave properties can be identified before and/or after earthquakes and identifying the physical mechanisms responsible for such variations,” he says.

Further, the team will assess the potential for operational forecasting of ruptures on meter-scale faults, employing machine learning to analyze the large datasets collected during their earthquake experiments.

“Earthquakes affect people on every continent, costing thousands of lives each year,” Shreedharan says. “Yet they’re among the least predictable natural hazards we face. With our research, we want to change this.”

USU Geosciences faculty member Srisharan Shreedharan, right, prepares for an experiment with graduate students, from left, Kwabena Poku-Agyemang and Alejandro Aguilar, using a custom-built, one-meter biaxial deformation 'earthquake machine.' The NSF-funded research is aimed at allowing scientists to observe more realistic representations of natural fault systems with a goal of improving earthquake forecasting. (Photo Credit: USU/M. Muffoletto)

In USU Geosciences' Shreedharan Lab, graduate students, from left, Sapana Regmi and Lindsey Broderick, perform a shear test on a load frame to measure the shear strength of a tiny rock sample. A goal of the NSF-funded research is to improve earthquake modeling. (Photo: USU/M. Muffoletto)

WRITER

Mary-Ann Muffoletto
Public Relations Specialist
College of Science
435-797-3517
maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu

CONTACT

Srisharan Shreedharan
Assistant Professor
Department of Geosciences
435-797-1273
srisharan.shreedharan@usu.edu


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