Geophysics News

New technologies that detect motion in the Earth’s crust are emerging in surprising places and reshaping our understanding of earthquakes.

Scott Fendorf, Jane Willenbring, Howard Zebker, Alex Konings, Steve Gorelick and Gabrielle Wong-Parodi received awards from the Woods Institute for interdisciplinary research to solve major environmental challenges.

The new school will include transitional academic divisions, university-wide cross-cutting themes organized into institutes and an accelerator focused on solutions. 

This summer, 19 undergraduate students are participating in faculty research projects through the Stanford Earth Summer Undergraduate Research program.

A new analysis of the 2018 collapse of Kīlauea volcano’s caldera helps to confirm the reigning scientific paradigm for how friction works on earthquake faults. The model quantifies the conditions necessary to initiate the kind of caldera collapse that sustains big, damaging eruptions of basaltic volcanoes like Kīlauea and could help to inform forecasting and mitigation.

A new method for seeing through ice sheets using radio signals from the sun could enable cheap, low-power and widespread monitoring of ice sheet evolution and contribution to sea-level rise.

Researchers examined the number of households unable to pay for damages from coastal flooding to reveal how sea-level rise could threaten the fabric of Bay Area communities over the next 40 years.

The geophysics PhD student has been awarded by the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) competition. 

Stanford Earth's Isabel Carrera, Rosie Ries and Allegra Scheirer discussed living with disabilities that might not be visually perceived and how the university could make campus more welcoming.

Much about Earth’s closest planetary neighbor, Venus, remains a mystery. Algorithms and techniques pioneered by Stanford Professor Howard Zebker’s research group will help to guide a search for active volcanoes and tectonic plate movements as part of a recently announced NASA mission to Venus.

The award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) is given to a researcher who has made distinguished contributions both to the advancement of the science and to the profession of exploration geophysics.

Faculty at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences recommend these 29 books for your summer reading.

Because foreshocks precede larger quakes, they have long presented the tantalizing prospect of warning of potentially damaging earthquakes. But to date, they have only been recognized in hindsight, and scientists for decades have sought to understand the physical processes that drive them. Computer modeling by Stanford geophysicists finds answers in the complex geometry of faults.

Derek Ouyang is among a team of scientists, students and community organizers who organized a five-year study to examine the social and psychological effects of climate exposure, while building relationships with the families as warming alters their lives. 

Rapidly worsening drought and a mandate to bring aquifer withdrawals and deposits into balance by 2040 have ignited interest in replenishing California groundwater through managed aquifer recharge. Stanford scientists demonstrate a new way to assess sites for this type of project using soil measurements and a geophysical system towed by an all-terrain vehicle.

Recipients of the school’s annual Excellence in Teaching Awards are selected based on nominations from students, faculty, and alumni.