Earthquakes

Jessica's research focuses on the mechanics of fault slip, seeking to understand why some faults slip at a steady rate near plate rate, others slip in large earthquakes, and still other faults slip in a series of slow earthquakes. Jessica's team want to understand how these processes work. Large populations around the world live near faults that host large and small earthquakes; improving our understanding of fault slip could help us to better predict when damaging earthquakes are likely to occur.

Compared to neighbours in New Zealand and Indonesia, Australians live in a state of blissful tectonic stability away from any tectonic plate boundaries. However, unlike other ‘stable’ tectonic regions, Australia has an unusually high number of earthquakes and holds the global record for most seismically documented surface-rupturing reverse earthquakes. Tamarah's talk will explore these tectonically puzzling earthquakes, and the problems they pose for earthquake hazard in ‘stable’
tectonic regions.

In this talk Richard will describe his team's recent studies of some of the major earthquake disasters of the interior of Asia, starting from Xi’an in central China through to Anatolia. He will explore the links between the sites where people live and zones of earthquake hazard, and will also explore the increasing challenges presented by earthquakes across the region.