At the invitation of State Key Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution, Dr. Walter Mooney, from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), Prof. Thomes Hillman Jordan, Prof. Gregory Beroza and Dr John K. McRaney, from the Southern California Earthquake Center (SECE), visited IGG on December 7, 2016, for academic exchange. 

Dr. Mooney is an international renowned geophysicist who has conducted extensive studies on the structures and the evolution of global crust and lithospheric mantle as well as being engaged in earthquake and tsunami hazard mitigation. As early as 1982, he began the cooperation with Chinese scholars.       

Prof. Jordan is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the director of SECE. He has made remarkable contributions to research on seismic processes, earthquake prediction and fully three-dimensional waveform tomography imaging of deep structures. Prof. Beroza is a famous seismologist from Stanford University and is the director of SECE and the chairman of the Seismology Department of AGU. His group has gained a lot of important achievements with great international influence in developing new seismic data analysis techniques, detecting earthquakes and investigating the release and distribution of seismic energy.  

On the afternoon of December 7, 2016, a seminar themed Seismological Study and Regional Structure was held in Meeting Room 518 on the third floor. Prof. Jordan gave an academic report entitled The Prediction Problems of Earthquake System Science. As a challenge in international seismology, earthquake prediction has always been a focus that has attracted much attention from the international academic community and public concern. Prof. Jordan introduced a detailed prediction system for seismic occurrence probabilities in California, America, and presented the related application achievements. This system was established by SECE, after being improved with the accumulation of information, and is expected to be effectively applied to the other countires all over the world. Prof. Beroza gave a report entitled New Approaches for Earthquake Search, in which he described a new method for effectively identifying small earthquakes on the basis of mass data.

This method, developed by his group, is known as fingerprinting and similarity thresholding (FAST). FAST first transforms all seismic waves into the particular fingerprints using wavelet transform, and then identifies the small earthquakes by investigating the similarity between these fingerprints. The FAST method needs no specific template and shows excellent performances in calculation efficiency. Doctor Mooney gave a report entitled Birth of an Ocean Basin: The Evolution of the Red Sea, during which he summarized the geological characteristics around the Red Sea and some USGS geophysical exploration results from Saudi Arabia. Moreover, he introduced their latest research results on the lithopheric structure of the Red Sea-Arabian Plate, and the proposed a Red Sea unfolding tectonic model that correlates Afar mantle plume activities with continental break-up, asymmetrical ocean ridge expansion and volcanic activities.

Finally, CHEN Ling, a research fellow from the State Key Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution, introduced the broadband flowing seismologic array detection plan for the Tethys tectonic belt and presented some related research achievements in the Alps and Iran. 

The seminar lasted nearly three and a half hours, during which the teachers and students from our institute had a fruitful exchange and discussion with the American scholars. They all learned some new knowledge and expressed their willingness to strengthen exchange and develop further cooperation.  

Prof. Jordan gave an academic report (Photo by IGG) 

Prof. Beroza gave an academic report (Photo by IGG) 

Dr. Mooney gave an academic report (Photo by IGG) 

CHEN Ling gave an academic report (Photo by IGG)