SCEC Award Number 19041 View PDF
Proposal Category Workshop Proposal
Proposal Title Workshop: Crustal Deformation Modeling
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Brad Aagaard United States Geological Survey Sylvain Barbot University of Southern California Elizabeth Hearn Independent Contractor Eric Hetland University of Michigan Matthew Knepley Argonne National Laboratory Charles Williams GNS Science (New Zealand)
Other Participants
SCEC Priorities 1e, 3b, 3f SCEC Groups SDOT, Geodesy, CXM
Report Due Date 03/15/2020 Date Report Submitted 07/11/2019
Project Abstract
 The 2019 Crustal Deformation Modeling Workshop was held June 10–14 at Colorado School of Mines. The 54 participants included 23 graduate students, 13 postdocs, 5 faculty, 9 researchers, and 4 others. 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 focused on introducing users to the changes and new features present in the upcoming v3.0 release of PyLith. Many of the participants applied the skills they learned in the tutorials to begin working on research problems in a variety of tectonic settings using either the current v2.2.1 release or a beta release of v3.0. The final two and one half days of the workshop focused on science talks and discussions, lightning talks, and informal poster sessions. 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, crustal deformation associated with volcanic eruptions, viscoelastic and elastoplastic processes throughout the earthquake cycle, and advancing numerical modeling techniques. Elizabeth Hearn described the SCEC Community Rheology Model and its relation to the other SCEC community models. Her presentation was followed by a breakout discussion (discussed in the next section) to help assess the priority of features to be included in the Community Rheology Model.
Intellectual Merit Here we summarize the key points from the discussions related to the Community Rheology Model. The priorities for an initial release of a community rheology model include:
• Collocated temperature, mineralogy, and effective viscosity with cross references to model components (i.e., which thermal model provided the temperature);
• Background strain-rate or stresses (community stress model) for nonlinear rheologies; and
• Provide multiple (or user-specified) model resolutions suitable for different applications.
The priorities for adding more complexity to a community rheology model include:
• Ability to include/exclude fault/shear zones;
• Rheology of faults (e.g., rate-state parameters);
• Define lithological/rheological horizons as independent surfaces, such as the brittle ductile transition, similar to LITHO2.0;
• Additional constitutive related information, such as pore fluid pressure;
• Uncertainty estimates and metrics for data quality; and
• Interface to customize the model (e.g., specify region of interest, select thermal models and rheology parameters) and plot cross sections.
Some requests for improvements to delivery of the SCEC Community Fault Model include:
• Ability to download/export the surface of a fault or fault segment at a user-specified resolution;
• Distribution or export in standard CAD formats (e.g., STEP) for better integration with solid modeling tools;
• Provide files that can be read directly into common visualization tools, such as Google Earth and GeoMapApp;
• Classify faults by maturity and importance; and
• Video-based tutorials and a public forum for questions/discussion.
Broader Impacts Our combination of tutorials and science discussions provides
important training in state-of-the-art tools in the context of
scientific research problems in crustal deformation. Our workshop
continues to draw very strong participation from graduate students and
postdocs, with two thirds of the participants fitting those categories
this year. As in several other vibrant SCEC sub-disciplines, 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. Two thirds of the participants had not participated in
a previous Crustal Deformation Modeling workshop or PyLith tutorial.
On a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 indicating the workshop exceeded
expectations, over 80% of the post-workshop survey respondents gave a
score of 4 or 5. For the tutorial portion, more than 80% of the
post-workshop survey respondents also gave a score of 4 or 5.
Exemplary Figure N/A