Prof. Rebecca Harrington

Subsurface pore fluid interactions with faults can redistribute stress, weaken faults, and unclamp them to trigger slip. My research focuses on how water-rock interactions influence earthquake rupture. I use seismological observations and modeling to try and determine how unstable fault rupture starts to initiate an earthquake by processes that happen kilometers underground. Within this realm of earthquake science, my research focuses on the physics of the earthquake source. The central approach that I take is observational, using recordings of ground motion during an earthquake (i.e. seismograms) to investigate how earthquake source parameters that are measurable from seismograms, such as radiated seismic energy, change with earthquake size. The scaling relationships between parameters (e.g., radiated seismic energy and earthquake size) can tell us about the speed at which faults rupture. Scaling relationships can also provide clues as to how energy is dissipated in an earthquake rupture, and the magnitude of stresses that can trigger earthquakes. I collaborate closely with fault rupture modelers to use both observational and modeling data to constrain fault/fluid interactions.