Thread: Advances in Upper Crustal Geophysical Characterization, an SSA 2021 Technical Session

Dear Colleagues,

Please join us from the ether April 19–23, 2021 for the SSA Annual Meeting and consider participating in the session entitled "Advances in Upper Crustal Geophysical Characterization" (description below). Abstracts are now being accepted until January 15th at 5 pm Pacific. Please see https://www.seismosoc.org/annual-meeting/ for additional meeting details.

Session description:
The upper crust plays a critical societal role, from access to clean water to the production of energy to the impact of geologic hazards. It is also our window into the layers below; geophysical variability in the near surface can map into deeper structure if not properly considered. With respect to seismic hazards and earthquake ground motions, variability in near surface geophysical properties can lead to an overall amplification or deamplification of strong ground motions, large lateral variability in site response, as well as resonance at specific ground shaking frequencies. With respect to groundwater, characterizing soil porosity, regolith development and fracture permeability all lead to better estimates of storage potential and groundwater flow rates. Geophysical characterization of the near surface is therefore critical to being able to address these issues. A vast number of methods exists with which to characterize the subsurface from direct methods that measure rock density and seismic velocity in-situ to indirect methods where seismic wave travel times, gravity, resistivity, and other parameters are measured at the Earth’s surface, and subsurface properties are inferred. We seek contributions that include direct and indirect field observations, laboratory experiments and geophysical theory that links observation and expectation to studies that explore the impact of competing assumptions.

See you online, and Happy Holidays!

Oliver Boyd, USGS Golden (olboyd<at>usgs.gov<olboyd<at>usgs.gov>)
Bill Stephenson, USGS Golden (wstephens<at>usgs.gov<wstephens<at>usgs.gov>)
Lee Liberty, Boise State University (lliberty<at>boisestate.edu<lliberty<at>boisestate.edu>)