Education
Education
Dr. Emily Roland Speaking at Montana Tech
Montana Tech’s Public Lecture Series will host Dr. Emily Roland from Western Washington University on Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 4 p.m. (Mountain Standard Time –US). Her presentation is titled, “Toques, Whales & lots of Seismometers: Exploring North America’s Fastest-slipping Fault System.”
“Tectonic plate boundaries that occur just off the coast in the marine setting have the potential to source significant geohazard events, including the world’s largest earthquakes and tsunamis. This talk will provide a tour of the Queen Charlotte Fault (QCF) that accommodates > 5 cm/year of strike-slip tectonic plate motions along the western continental margin offshore British Columbia and southeast Alaska. Slip-rates and maximum earthquake magnitudes on the QCF exceed that of the San Andreas, its sister to the south. Because it lies offshore, the fault system has been difficult to study, despite generating several magnitude 7-8 earthquakes throughout the past century, and Canada’s largest recorded event in 1949. In summer 2021 an international team coordinated the margin’s largest seismic experiment to try to characterize the fault system in detail and inform models of seismic and tsunami hazard using the most modern marine seismological tools. In addition to being a beautiful and geologically unique environment, the transform margin provides an excellent natural laboratory to explore how earthquakes may be influenced by material variations and geometrical complexity.”
Dr. Emily Roland is an Assistant Professor at Western Washington University. Her research is focused on exploring how the structure of the Earth influences earthquakes, and sometimes landslide and tsunami susceptibility. Utilizing marine seismic and acoustic tools are some of Emily’s favorite ways of observing the Earth and she is often at sea aboard large research vessels deploying or recovering ocean bottom seismometers or using seismic or sonar imaging tools to characterize the seafloor or what is beneath it. Emily grew up in Washington State, received a BS from the Colorado School of Mines in Geophysical Engineering and a PhD from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program. She worked for the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage Alaska, and as an Assistant Professor in the School of Oceanography at University of Washington before moving to WWU in Bellingham Washington to join the Geology Department and help start a new major in Marine and Coastal Science. She is the mother of two boys and is hoping to drive them to Montana for some skiing, camping or hiking as soon as possible.
The ZOOM only presentation can be accessed at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85088407529.
“Tectonic plate boundaries that occur just off the coast in the marine setting have the potential to source significant geohazard events, including the world’s largest earthquakes and tsunamis. This talk will provide a tour of the Queen Charlotte Fault (QCF) that accommodates > 5 cm/year of strike-slip tectonic plate motions along the western continental margin offshore British Columbia and southeast Alaska. Slip-rates and maximum earthquake magnitudes on the QCF exceed that of the San Andreas, its sister to the south. Because it lies offshore, the fault system has been difficult to study, despite generating several magnitude 7-8 earthquakes throughout the past century, and Canada’s largest recorded event in 1949. In summer 2021 an international team coordinated the margin’s largest seismic experiment to try to characterize the fault system in detail and inform models of seismic and tsunami hazard using the most modern marine seismological tools. In addition to being a beautiful and geologically unique environment, the transform margin provides an excellent natural laboratory to explore how earthquakes may be influenced by material variations and geometrical complexity.”
Dr. Emily Roland is an Assistant Professor at Western Washington University. Her research is focused on exploring how the structure of the Earth influences earthquakes, and sometimes landslide and tsunami susceptibility. Utilizing marine seismic and acoustic tools are some of Emily’s favorite ways of observing the Earth and she is often at sea aboard large research vessels deploying or recovering ocean bottom seismometers or using seismic or sonar imaging tools to characterize the seafloor or what is beneath it. Emily grew up in Washington State, received a BS from the Colorado School of Mines in Geophysical Engineering and a PhD from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program. She worked for the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage Alaska, and as an Assistant Professor in the School of Oceanography at University of Washington before moving to WWU in Bellingham Washington to join the Geology Department and help start a new major in Marine and Coastal Science. She is the mother of two boys and is hoping to drive them to Montana for some skiing, camping or hiking as soon as possible.
The ZOOM only presentation can be accessed at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85088407529.
