SCEC Award Number 17099 View PDF
Proposal Category Workshop Proposal
Proposal Title Workshop: Crustal Deformation Modeling
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Brad Aagaard United States Geological Survey Matthew Knepley Argonne National Laboratory Eric Lindsey Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) Jeanne Sauber Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Eric Hetland University of Michigan
Other Participants
SCEC Priorities 1c, 1e, 3b SCEC Groups SDOT, CS, Geodesy
Report Due Date 06/15/2018 Date Report Submitted 08/10/2017
Project Abstract
 The 2017 Crustal Deformation Modeling Workshop was held June 26--30 at
Colorado School of Mines. This continued a series of workshops that
Mark Simons and Brad Hager began in 2002; the most recent previous
workshop was held in June, 2014. The 64 participants included 40
graduate students, 7 postdocs, 8 faculty, and 9 researchers. Our
combination of tutorials and science discussions continues to draw
very strong participation from graduate students and postdocs, with
over 72% of the participants fitting those categories this year. As
in several other vibrant SCEC subdisciplines, we see faculty, who
participated as graduate students or
postdocs in earlier workshops in this series, sending their own
students and postdocs to this workshop. Nearly 80\% of the
participants had not participated in a previous Crustal Deformation
Modeling workshop or PyLith tutorial.

The complete agenda is available on the CIG website at
http://geodynamics.org/cig/events/calendar/2017-cdm-workshop/agenda/. The
agenda includes links to PDF files of the slides from the
presentations, and slides and videos for the tutorials.
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). In addition to discussions within the organizing committee, we also solicited input on speakers and topics from the leaders and co-leaders of the SCEC Tectonic Geodesy Disciplinary Group, Community Models Focus Group, and Stress and Deformation Over Time Focus Group. The talks spanned a range of topics under the themes of the mechanics of fault slip in subduction zones and crustal faults, constraining geodetic-based slip rates, the effects of fluids on natural and induced earthquakes, viscoelastic and elastoplastic processes throughout the earthquake cycle, and advancing numerical modeling techniques. Elizabeth Hearn was originally scheduled to give a presentation on the SCEC Community Rheology Model, but she was not able to attend, so she provided some slides to foster discussion during one of the breakout sessions. We used two breakout sessions to inspire discussion on some important topics. For the first breakout session we divided the participants into seven groups based on their interest in discussing three different topics. Three groups discussed imaging fault slip from a variety of perspectives, one group discussed the utility of community rheology models, and three groups discussed identifying new directions in crustal deformation modeling. In the second breakout discussion, we divided the participants into seven different groups, with all of the groups discussing how to reduce the primary obstacles people face in their research
Broader Impacts 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. The tutorials were divided into 8 sessions (about 60\% of the total
time) intermixed with dedicated time for running examples and getting
one-on-one help. The tutorial sessions focused on a simplified 3-D
version of the Cascadia subduction zone to illustrate a broad range of
features of the code, including multiple prescribed slip earthquake
ruptures on intersecting faults, inverting for coseismic slip using
3-D static Green's functions, and stresses from gravitational body
forces. A 2-D subduction zone example illustrated quasi-static
modeling of earthquake cycles using slip-weakening and rate-state
friction. The tutorials also included a session dedicated to
troubleshooting common problems. While the tutorials focused on a
subduction zone, most of the concepts directly apply to modeling
strike-slip faults as well. Many of the participants applied the
skills they learned in the tutorials to begin working on research
problems in a variety of tectonic settings, including strike-slip
tectonic environments.
Exemplary Figure No figures for the workshop report.