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My students and I study the structure and tectonics of plate margins and mountain belts using seismic reflection and refraction data. In the past 10 years, we have conducted reflection/refraction investigations in the San Andreas transform fault system in southeastern, central, and northern California, and in the Brooks Range, Arctic Alaska. We are currently interpreting a large seismic data set from the Mendocino Triple Junction, northern California, to understand tectonics within the triple junction region. We are also reprocessing and reinterpreting COCORP reflection and PASSCAL refraction data from the Basin and Range province.
A large part of our research is devoted to developing innovative seismic data processing methods for deep data, including depth migration algorithms for vertical-incidence and wide-angle seismic data, and synthetic seismogram algorithms for 2 and 3-dimensionally heterogeneous media. To characterize the highly heterogeneous rocks found in the crystalline crust we have developed stochastic models of igneous and metamorphic rocks, providing a statistical description of rock fabrics and seismic velocities.
In summer 1995, we started a project to investigate the Phanerozoic mantle beneath the southern Rocky Mountains/Colorado Plateau and the Archean mantle beneath the Alberta Plains. The project, known as the Deep Probe, is a collaborative project involving a number of universities (Rice, Purdue, Oregon, and UT El Paso in the US, and British Columbia and Alberta in Canada).