SCEC Award Number 14039 View PDF
Proposal Category Workshop Proposal
Proposal Title Workshop: Crustal Deformation Modeling
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Brad Aagaard United States Geological Survey Thorsten Becker University of Southern California Andrew Freed Purdue University Eric Hetland California Institute of Technology Rowena Lohman Cornell University Paul Segall Stanford University Mark Simons California Institute of Technology Charles Williams GNS Science (New Zealand)
Other Participants
SCEC Priorities 2d, 1b, 1e SCEC Groups FARM, CS, SDOT
Report Due Date 07/27/2014 Date Report Submitted N/A
Project Abstract
 The 2014 Crustal Deformation Modeling Workshop was held June 23–27 at Stanford University. Registration was first-come,
first served with a cap of 80 participants and open to anyone in the community with an interest in crustal deformation modeling.
We sent email announcements to CIG, SCEC, UNAVCO, EarthScope, and IRIS email lists. The 77 participants (we had a few
last minute cancellations) included 31 graduate students, 17 postdocs, 14 faculty, and 15 researchers. This distribution is similar
to our previous crustal deformation modeling workshops. We have found that the combination of tutorials and science talks and
discussions results in strong participation by students and early career scientists.
The complete agenda is available on the CIG website at http://geodynamics.org/cig/events/calendar/2014-
cdm-workshop/meeting-info/agenda/. The agenda includes links to PDF files of the slides from the presentation,
and slides and videos for the tutorials.
The consensus of the workshop wrap-up discussion was to continue this series of biannual workshops. This most recent
workshop, in particular, suggested a growing interest in sophisticated modeling of the earthquake cycle and incorporating more
complex physics. People voiced support for the 5-day duration and general format of the workshop and holding it in late June.
Some of the organizing committee did not attend the workshop, so we intend to refresh the organizing committee for future
workshops with those more actively involved in the SCEC or CIG communities. Additionally, we will consider registration via
an application with a set deadline to facilitate participation from the most relevant members of the community rather than using
a first-come, first-served procedure.
Intellectual Merit The final two and one half days of the workshop focused on science talks and discussions and informal poster sessions (the
posters were posted for the duration of the workshop). The talks spanned a range of topics under the umbrellas of 2.5-D and
3-D effects of post-seismic deformation, stress in the lithosphere over the earthquake cycle, and strain localization. One of
the goals of the workshop was to inspire an increase in modeling efforts contributing to the Community Stress Model. To
this end, Yuri Fialko and Elizabeth Hearn presented talks on the stress field around strike-slip faults over the earthquake cycle.
Bridget Smith-Konter, Bill Holt, and Charles Williams presented talks on various aspects of loading from gravitational and
basal tractions.
We used a breakout session (see Appendix A) to solicit input from the community on the scientific questions important to
modeling crustal deformation and modeling related obstacles to answering those questions. Additionally, we held a group
discussion on development of a SCEC Community Rheology Model (see next section). These discussion sessions will hopefully
facilitate development of the SCEC-5 and CIG-3 proposals to NSF.
Broader Impacts Tutorials
The first two days of the workshop were dedicated to tutorials related to the use of PyLith, an open-source code for 2-D and
3-D simulations of quasi-static and dynamic crustal deformation associated with earthquake faulting. A pre-workshop online
help session via Adobe Connect attended by 30 users facilitated getting people up to speed in using PyLith, CUBIT/Trelis
(finite-element mesh generation software), and ParaView (3-D visualization software). This augmented the extensive written
documentation and on-demand videos from the 2011 and 2013 online tutorials to allow the in-person tutorials to start at an
intermediate level.
The two days of tutorials included 7 tutorial sessions and 4 tinker time sessions (dedicated time for running examples and
getting one-on-one help). The tutorial sessions covered an overview of the software tools, a 2-D subduction zone end-to-end
example, mesh generation of a 3-D subduction zone focusing on nonplanar geometry, mesh generation using complex cell
sizing functions, use of fault friction in quasi-static and dynamic simulations, generating 3-D static Green’s functions, solver
options, and debugging simulation errors.
Exemplary Figure None