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Seismo Lab Seminar

Friday, March 14, 2025
4:00pm to 5:00pm
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South Mudd 254
Exploration of Seismic Anisotropy of Earth Materials and Alaska Structure
Carl Tape, Professor of Geophysics, Department of Geosciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks,

For many seismologists, seismic anisotropy is a complex nuisance. Yet it is undeniably present in the Earth, from the scale of crystals like feldspars to metamorphic terranes to the uppermost mantle. Alaska offers an exciting testbed for exploring anisotropy, with insights from exhumed mantle rocks, corner flow at the edge of a subduction-collision zone, and foliated metamorphic units and other fabrics in the crust. One of the grand challenges of seismology is to estimate the variations in subsurface anisotropic elastic properties using seismic waves recorded at the surface. I will discuss how this challenge can be faced with efforts from realms of theory, computation, laboratory, and observation.