Publications

New paper on inverting for slip rate using GPS and focal mechanism data

January 28, 2024 – 11:23 pm

Hanna Elston’s new paper “A New Method to Invert for Interseismic Deep Slip Along Closely Spaced Faults Using Surface Velocities and Subsurface Stressing-Rate Tensors” is out in Earth and Space Sciences

Locations of regularly spaced (a) surface velocities (triangles) and (b) stressing-rate tensors (circles) for the complex fault model. Red fault trace indicates the inactive portion of the northern slip pathway in forward models. (a) Map view with black box indicating the region used for misfit calculations. (b) Oblique view of San Andreas fault system and San Jacinto fault system geometry colored by the forward model slip rates.
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Graduate Student Thesis Defense

Laura Fattaruso defends her PhD

January 2, 2024 – 11:25 pm

On January 2nd Dr. Laura Fattaruso successfully defended her PhD “Before the Break: Probing the Mechanics of Rock Fracture Growth and Communicating Science“.

Laura stands to side of her title screen. Several audience members heads in the foreground.

Congratulations Laura!

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Conference Presentations

Presentations at the 2023 American Geophysical Union meeting

December 15, 2023 – 11:41 pm
  • NH12A-08: Accessibility of Earthquake Early Warning with deaf and hard of hearing communities: a review | Cooke, Takayama, Cooper, Sumy and McBride
  • S33D-0439: Pre-Earthquake Tractions on the Southern San Andreas and San Jacinto Faults over the Last ~1000 Years | Anderson-Merritt and Cooke
  • T42A-01: Energy budget of subduction zones | Cooke, Crider, Morrell, Yanites and Karlstrom
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Graduate Student Thesis Defense Uncategorized

Hanna Elston defends her dissertation

December 7, 2023 – 11:32 pm

Hanna Elston successfully defended her dissertation on Thursday December 7th. Investigating the impact of rheology and geometry on restraining bend evolution using analog and numerical models

She will start a post-doc with Jack Loveless in January. Congratulations Dr Elston!

  • Presenting her dissertation
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Graduate Student Thesis Defense

Christ Ramos Sánchez defends her MS thesis

December 6, 2023 – 11:22 pm

One Wednesday December 6th, Christ successfully defended her MS thesis. Multi-method Approach to Assess the Impact of Off-fault Deformation During Fault Evolution

She will start a new job at Tetratek in San Diego, CA in January. Congratulations Christ!

  • Presenting her thesis
  • Christ celebrating!
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Conference Presentations

Geomod23

October 1, 2023 – 2:53 pm

Three research presenations from the UMass geomechanics group at the Geomod23 conference Paris, France Sept 25-28.

  • Elston, Hanna M, & Michele L. Cooke, Impact of rheology on restraining bend evolution and slip-rate variations: Insights from analog models (oral talk)
  • Ramos Sánchez, Christ F., Michele L. Cooke, Laaninam Chaipornkaew, Sara Visage, Hanna Elston, Pauline Souloumiac and Ehsan Kosari, Predicting Off-fault Deformation Using Convolutional Neural Networks Trained on Experimental Strike-Slip Faults (poster)
  • Ramos Sánchez, Christ F., and Michele L. Cooke,The impact of pre-existing weaknesses on strike-slip fault evolution: rupture maps from the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake inspire scaled physical experiments (poster)
three women smiling in front of the eiffel tower at night.
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notable events

Michele serves on the planning committee for NASEM workshops on Disrupting Ableism and Advancing STEM

June 5, 2023 – 11:56 am

The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine are hosting a 5 part workshop series on Disrupting Ableism and Advancing STEM. Michele is on the workshop planning committee, who have been working on this for the past 5 months. All sessions are recorded.

The first day was hybrid leadership summit with participants from all across the STEM ecosystem. On that day Michele moderated a panel on the”Describing Disability: Language and Models”

The following four workshops were entirely on-line and cover:

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notable events

Grasshopper wins the UMass 3-minute thesis competition

March 3, 2023 – 8:56 pm
white individual wearing black smiles holding a bound award. They are standing next to the Dean of the graduate school who has glasses and white hair. Another finalist stands behind the winner. Photo by Christine Hatch.
photo by Christine Hatch
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notable events

Presentation at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory

March 1, 2023 – 8:29 pm

Wednesday March 1, Michele gave a talk to the Marine Geology and Geophysics (MGG) / Seismology, Geology and Tectonophysics (SGT) divisional seminar series.

What can tiny faults tell us about evolving seismic hazard of crustal strike-slip faults?
Evidence suggests that strike-slip fault systems become less complex as they mature and this evolving maturity can impact the occurrence of damaging earthquakes on the fault system. Inferring the past and future seismic potential of evolving faults depends on interpreting fault system evolution from present-day observations and conditions. How much could future slip rates differ from those of the recent past? How does off-fault deformation evolve with fault maturity? How does seismic potential change during fault system reorganization? Using scaled physical experiments we can directly measure variations in fault slip rate, off-fault deformation and seismic moment release rate associated with strike-slip fault evolution. We also use machine learning to train convolutional neural networks to predict off-fault deformation from active strike-slip fault maps. These findings can guide our interpretations of past and future seismic hazards from present-day crustal conditions.

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Conference Presentations

2022 Fall AGU meeting

December 13, 2022 – 8:22 pm
  • Elston and Cooke. Loading Rate Influence on Restraining Bend Evolution (invited), T15B-06
  • Garvue, Spotila and Cooke. A Kinematic and Morphometric Analysis of Restraining Bends in the Eastern California Shear Zone, T12E-0120:
  • Oglesby, Kyriakopoullos, Tarnowski and Cooke. The Effects of Pre-Stress Assumptions on Dynamic Rupture with Complex Fault Geometry in the San Gorgonio Pass, California, Region, S23A-02
  • Cooke, Why we need to crip the classroom (and the lab and the field…), ED45A-01
  • Ramos Sanchez, Cooke, Chaipornkaew, Visage, Elston, Souloumniac and Sharm. University of Massachusetts Amherst Predicting Off-fault Deformation Using Convolutional Neural Networks Trained On Experimental Strike-Slip Faults, T52C-0049

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