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We are pleased to start a new form of SCEC communications consisting of brief updates from SCEC Headquarters, Science Steering Committee, and the Board of Directors.
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Over the last year, several staff members were added to SCEC headquarters to fill positions of people who moved on to other organizations and to augment the Research Computing, Engagement, and Education groups. These include Vanessa Nava (Public Education Project Specialist), Akash Bhatthal (Software Engineer), and Xaul Starr (Education Specialist), who have now fully settled into their new roles and are performing very well. In the fall, Ahmed Elbanna will also join SCEC at USC, first as a director-designate for the remainder of 2025 and then as the next SCEC Director in January 2026. More information on this key addition to SCEC was shared in an email to the community on March 24.
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The devastating March 28, 2025, Mw 7.7 strike-slip earthquake on the Sagaing Fault in Myanmar (Burma) is a clear analog in terms of size and type, as were the disastrous 2023 Mw > 7.5 earthquakes in Turkey, for large earthquakes that are expected to occur on the major strike-slip faults in California. These earthquakes and others before them provide somber illustrations that larger continental strike slip earthquakes of size M > 7, which occur somewhere on Earth about twice a year, will devastate unprepared societies. As highlighted in a SCEC article published shortly after the major Mw > 7.5 earthquakes in Turkiye, California is highly vulnerable to Mw > 7.5 earthquakes, due to the intensity of expected ground motion and the vulnerability of building inventories. We should redouble our efforts to do what we can to increase the resilience of California to large earthquakes, and their cascading hazards (landslides, liquefaction, fires, tsunamis), including developing a stronger interface with earthquake engineers and engaging public officials and the public at large in preparedness activities.
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We would also like to take this opportunity to reaffirm a core value of SCEC, which is to develop an open and vibrant community where every member is welcomed and can contribute both to their own development and to the SCEC goals of advancing earthquake science and earthquake resilience. The Board of Directors is considering how to effectively continue our community building efforts and we will provide further related information when available. Additional updates on different domains of SCEC activities are provided in the following sections.
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Science Activities
The report from the 2024 California Community Earth Models for Seismic Hazard Assessments Workshop is now available (Aagaard et al., 2025). Held virtually in March with over 200 participants, the workshop brought together researchers and stakeholders to evaluate the current state of California’s community Earth models and define priorities for their future development. The report outlines key scientific and societal use cases, from advancing earthquake physics to improving seismic hazard assessments and supporting emerging applications like carbon sequestration. It provides a comprehensive inventory of existing models, discusses methods for integrating diverse datasets, and emphasizes the need for consistent, accessible, and community-driven model development. The workshop also highlighted opportunities for coordination between SCEC and the new Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT), particularly in areas of overlapping interest such as the Mendocino Triple Junction.
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In January 21-24, 2025, the Quakeworx group conducted a virtual workshop on Advancing Earthquake Science and Cybertraining in Seismology consisting of lectures and hands-on exercises covering basic and technical aspects of several codes on dynamic rupture and seismicity that are available on the Quakeworx Science gateway. These include SeisSol - a dynamic rupture and wave propagation simulator, Tandem - a multi-cycle earthquake simulator, MOOSE-Farms - a fault and rupture mechanics simulator, UCERF3-ETAS - an epidemic type aftershock model for California, and pyCSEP - an earthquake forecast evaluation code. The workshop had 65 participants from 16 different countries, of which 92% were students or postdocs. All workshop material is available on the Quakeworx Workshop website, and recordings of all sessions are published on YouTube.
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The global relevance of SCEC is also exemplified by the February 2025 Workshop of the SCEC/USGS Community Stress Drop Validation Study, attended virtually by over 100 participants from 20 countries. The workshop report describes the impact the collaborative experiment has had on the researchers involved, and future plans to improve estimation of parameters fundamental to source physics and ground motion prediction. Perhaps the main finding is the fundamental difficulty of separating source contribution from path and site effects in recorded seismograms and spectra, and how this leads to ambiguity in systematic dependencies of derived source parameters with earthquake magnitude and depth. Many of the results of the study are already available online (e.g. Shearer al., 2025) in advance of the publication of the Special Issue in Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America in June 2025.
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On April 4, 2025, SCEC conducted a hybrid workshop with 79 participants from 11 countries titled Multi-Scale Seismic Velocity Models for the SAFS in the Western US. The key goals of the workshop were (i) to develop plans for deriving validated merged multi-scale velocity models for the SAFS in the Western US, (ii) to identify critical gaps in data and techniques that are needed to derive such models, (iii) and to discuss development of cyberinfrastructure tools needed to maintain, access, use, and visualize the velocity models. These topics were covered in 3 sessions consisting of lectures and group discussions. Recorded presentations are available at the workshop website. The report of the workshop organizers will be made available to the community and will guide the development of a multi-scale statewide community velocity model.
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Improved earthquake forecasting that moves beyond empirical approaches is a longstanding goal of SCEC. Just as Cybershake uses physics-based wave propagation simulations for ground motion forecasting, multi-cycle rupture simulators have the potential to use physics-based simulations for rupture forecasting. Vazquez and Jordan, 2025, work towards this goal by examining differences between version 3 of the time-dependent UCERF rupture forecast and a million-year catalog generated by RSQSim. They map the RSQSim ruptures onto equivalent UCERF3 ruptures to approximate individual rupture rates and fault subsection participation rates, and find cases in which those rates disagree. Some of the discrepancies can be attributed to the differences in slip rates that drive the models, whereas others arise from the absence of fault dynamics in the UCERF3 forecast. Their study marks an important step towards physics-based earthquake rupture forecasts.
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Research Computing
During the first three months of 2025, SCEC’s research computing group contributed to a number of SCEC research activities including development of ground motion simulation and validation methods, development of earthquake forecast evaluation methods and practices, and development of community earth models. As part of SCEC’s ground motion modeling research, we performed an analysis of the recently calculated CyberShake 24.8 probabilistic seismic hazard model for northern California. As part of SCEC’s earthquake forecasting and evaluation research, we installed the OpenSHA-based UCERF3-ETAS software and the pyCSEP earthquake forecast evaluation software into the Quakeworx Science gateway, and which were then used in the January, 2025, CyberTraining Quakeworx Workshop. And, as part of SCEC’s community earth model development activities, we integrated several additional northern California seismic velocity models into SCEC’s browser-based Community Velocity Models Explorer which now provides a map-based interface to a collection of more than 20 California velocity models.
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The SCEC Science Collaboration
The SCEC Science Plan outlines a roadmap for distributing research efforts across southern, central, and northern California to achieve the Center’s science goals as the Statewide California Earthquake Center. SCEC prioritizes investigator-driven, interdisciplinary research, fostering connections with scientific, engineering, and community stakeholders. This collaborative approach sustains earthquake science research, explores new avenues, welcomes new investigators, and provides a global platform for multidisciplinary research, workforce development, and community engagement.
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Each year, SCEC solicits projects through a competitive process, attracting hundreds of investigators to contribute to the Center’s programs and activities. In 2024, with funding from NSF, USGS, DOE, and NASA, SCEC awarded over $2.0 million in mini-grants to support 62 research projects, 6 workshops, and 1 technical skills training, involving 110 investigators across 39 institutions and over 400 participants on all projects. These projects have concluded, and their outcomes are now available in the SCEC awards database. We encourage you to register your SCEC-funded research in the SCEC publications database and share news about your results and collaborations with the SCEC Science Steering Committee (SSC) who will highlight community research accomplishments.
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Compared to 2024, SCEC received 33% more proposals in response to the 2025 Science Plan announced in October 2024, with total funding requests exceeding $3.8 million. Among the 160 investigators, 47 are first-time PIs submitting proposals to SCEC. Nearly two-thirds of the proposed projects indicated they will contribute to or use SCEC Community Earth Models. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the SCEC Proposal Review Committee (PRC), Board of Directors, and research administration staff, along with experienced program managers at our sponsoring agencies, SCEC will award $1.93 million to support 64 research projects and 7 science workshops selected for the 2025 Collaboration Plan. Many investigators across 36 institutions have received the good news and begun their work. We look forward to showcasing their preliminary results at the 2025 SCEC annual meeting, scheduled for September 7-10.
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Experiential Learning and Career Advancement
SCEC’s Experiential Learning and Career Advancement (ELCA) program continues to expand opportunities for students and early-career researchers to engage meaningfully in earthquake science. Recruitment for the 2025 SOURCES and SURE internship programs concluded with 225 applications, bolstered by targeted outreach to more than 140 institutions, 70 career centers, 100 MESA chapters, and several student-centered events. Planning is now underway for the summer program, which will provide eleven hands-on internships focused on advancing participants’ research skills and career development.
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SCEC continues its Mentorship Workshop series this spring with a new collaboration with the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT), aiming to enhance research engagement by strengthening mentoring practices in the geoscience community. In April, SCEC hosted the Research Mentee Training, a two-day virtual training that supported graduate students in building the skills to navigate mentoring relationships and maximize their research experiences. A Research Mentor Workshop for postdoctoral scholars and early-career researchers is scheduled for May 22–23, with registration currently open. As planning for the 2025 SCEC Annual Meeting moves forward, the SCEC is actively contributing to student and early-career programming—including the Transitions Breakfast Club, Lightning Talks, and other interactive opportunities that support professional development and community-building across the SCEC collaboration.
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Public Education and Preparedness
SCEC’s Public Education and Preparedness programs are focused on Tsunami awareness and activities this time each year, as part of NOAA/Cal OES support for managing the TsunamiZone.org website, which is similar to ShakeOut (people register their activities and we provide resources). We promote California’s Tsunami Preparedness Week at the end of March (for which we supported activities across the state with materials or staffing in-person booths, plus hosted a business-focused webinar, and had record-setting participation this year) and the CARIBE WAVE exercise involving all Caribbean nations each year in mid-March. We’re also ramping up ShakeOut promotion, with a focus on Utah’s Shakeout on April 17. The SCEC-led Earthquake Country Alliance has had workshops in SoCal and the Bay Area (both including SCEC scientists), led in-person and online presentations statewide, is supporting plans for the Centennial of the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake, and planning more HayWired Toolkit trainings for the Bay Area. Finally, we continue to support Quake Heroes events statewide, including 10 being planned for underserved communities with support from the California Seismic Safety Commission.
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Board of Directors
The first quarter of 2025 has been a busy time for the SCEC Board of Directors as they have worked to fill multiple Board leadership roles. First, the Board would like to welcome four at-large members representing the Participating Institutions who are starting two-year terms this year: Rachel Abercrombie (Boston University), Kaj Johnson (Indiana University), Karen Luttrell (Louisiana State University), and Scott Marshall (Appalachian State University). SCEC thanks this group and everyone representing the Participating Institutions who volunteered to stand for election. Further, the Board formally approved applications to join SCEC as Participating Institutions by: Cal Poly Humboldt (rep. Melanie Michalak), CSU San Bernardino (rep. Sally McGill), University of Michigan Ann Arbor (rep. Nathan Niemi), and the Earthquake Research Institute (Tokyo, rep. Takashi Furumura). It is wonderful to see SCEC attract a growing community and we encourage all participating community members to have their institutions formally join SCEC as a Core or Participating Institution. A link to the application and more information can be found here.
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In March, the Board unanimously approved the 2025 SCEC Collaboration Plan, which awarded $1.93 million for 64 research projects and 7 science workshops. The Board would like to thank everyone who submitted proposals for this year, as well as the 2025 SCEC Proposal Review Committee (Chaired by Alice Gabriel) for their work in reviewing the proposals.
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The Board also voted to fill several Board roles including the roles of Board Chair and Board Vice-chair, and the more recently established Board Officer roles that are intended to assist in critical Center governance activities. Tim Dawson (CGS) and Rachel Abercrombie (Boston U)were reelected to the roles of Board Chair and Vice-chair respectively. The Board also elected the following individuals as Board Officers: Sylvain Barbot (University of Southern California), Jillian Maloney*, (San Diego State University), David Oglesby* (U.C. Riverside), Andreas Plesch* (Harvard), Zach Ross (Caltech), Heather Savage* (U.C. Santa Cruz), Paul Segall* (Stanford), and Daniel Trugman* (University of Nevada Reno). Please join us in congratulating and thanking the elected Board Officers for their willingness to serve in this capacity for a two-year term (2025-2026), as well as Camilla Cattania (MIT) for her valuable service as interim officer.
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Finally, none of these elections could have happened without the efforts of Andreas Plesch, Camilla Cattania, Daniel Trugman, and Mark Benthien, who were instrumental in recruiting candidates and navigating the logistics to conduct these elections. Please join us in thanking this group for their efforts in helping fill these vital roles within SCEC.
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*Indicates individuals who served as an interim Board Officer.
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