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ACT tech talk: Earthquake catalogues and 3D earth structure: a coupled problem

Event Type

Event Date

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Event Location

Event Address

Scrivener room, Geoscience Australia, Symonston

Event Start

1630

Event End

1800

Event Details

Date: Thursday 28th Nov
Time: 4.30 to 6.00pm
Venue: Scrivener room, Geoscience Australia, Symonston
Title: Earthquake catalogues and 3D earth structure: a coupled problem
Speaker: Babak Hejrani
 

Abstract:

The majority of the Earth’s seismic activity occurs within the top 30 km of the crust which illustrates the shallow dynamic of the driving plate tectonics of our planet. At the same time large, shallow and tsunamigenic earthquakes are among the most destructive natural disasters which surround Australia in the Pacific ‘ring-of-fire’. The 2004 Great Sumatra earthquake and associated tsunami killed ~230,000 people in 14 countries. Thus, the accurate estimation of the location and mechanism of shallow earthquakes is highly crucial for seismic hazard assessments and a better understanding of the shallow dynamic of the Earth. I have developed and implemented methods to incorporate the 3D heterogeneity of the earth into seismic source parameter estimation. Based on these developments, I have drawn a new earthquake catalogue for Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands using a 3D continental earth model of the Australasian regions. Using high-resolution 3D Earth models, I present a high-frequency simulation of the 2016 Petermann Ranges earthquake in central Australia.

 

Bio:

I am from Kurdistan (in Iran). I did my bachelor degree in pure mathematics in University of Kurdistan. I moved to Tehran (Iran’s capital) to do a master degree in Geophysics.

I did my PhD studies on 3D Earth imaging in Aarhus University, Denmark. I moved to Australia, 5 years ago, to undertake a post-doctoral research on incorporating 3D earth structure into earthquake monitoring.

My presentation today will bring together various strands of my research and its application to earthquakes within the Australasian portion of the ring-of-fire