Underground disposal of wastewater from fossil fuel production in the nation’s largest oil field is causing long-dormant faults to slip in a way that could damage wells, according to new analyses of satellite and seismicity data.
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.
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.
“In principle, when we know where the energy is being stored, we can say which places are more likely to have an earthquake and which places less," says Howard Zebker.