Dr. Zhigang Peng is an Assistant Professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences of the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received a B.S. degree in Geophysics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1998, a M.S. degree in Electric Engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2002, and a Ph.D. degree in Geological Sciences (Seismology) from USC in 2004. His current research focuses on understanding earthquake interaction, slow earthquakes, and active fault zone structures.
Do earthquakes talk to each other at large distance?
Recent devastating earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, China and Baja California have led many people wondering whether the current earthquake activity is unusual or these events are somehow linked. In this talk I will focus on the second question, and show some new evidence that seismic waves from large earthquakes could trigger fault movement thousands of miles away. Examples include subtle fault chatters (known as non-volcanic tremor to seismologists) beneath the mighty San Andreas Fault in California triggered by a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Alaska in 2002, and the magnitude 9.2 catastrophic earthquake in Sumatra in 2002. In addition, recent earthquakes in Chile and Baja California also triggered small to moderate earthquakes in several geothermal regions in California. The underlying physics behind such remote triggering, and its implications for earthquake hazard assessments will also be discussed.
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