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Feature News PAGE 8 Friends PAGE 20 EAPS Scope NEWSlETTER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF EARTH, ATMOSPHERIc AND PlANETARy ScIENcES | 2014-2015 Feature PAGE 4 News PAGE 8 Friends PAGE 20 Earth: Inside-Out. We can’t see it, Introducing new Assistant Professor Read about past and future can’t touch it. How can we know what’s Greg Fournier • Three faculty earn EAPS lectures and events • Meet our inside? EAPS geoscientists have the tenure appointments • Faculty Awards new student fellows • Find out how tools and tenacity to tease apart just and Honors • Research Highlights • you can help us to continue to attract how the interior of the earth works. 2013/2014 Degrees Awarded the best and the brightest to EAPS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Helen Hill LETTER ONLINE EDITOR FROM THE Heather Queyrouze DEPARTMENT EAPS SCIENCE WRITER Helen Hill HEAD CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dear Alumni and Friends, Jennifer chu vicki Ekstrom The new academic year is well underway and the Angela Ellis Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Jimmy Gasore Sciences is again abuzz with activity—with a fresh intake of students, research and course offerings COPYEDITOR of an extraordinary variety, and lively seminars and Allison Provaire special lectures almost daily. Our students are truly the engines of EAPS research. DESIGN DIRECTOR This fall we welcomed 21 new graduate students Jen Fentress from seven countries, and we are delighted to report that two EAPS visiting committee members have committed to support our graduate students again PHOTOGRAPHY this year: George J. Elbaum ’59, SM ’63, PhD ’67 continues his support of Helen Hill two Whiteman Fellowships, and Neil Rasmussen ’76, SM ’80 has established the endowed Norman c. Rasmussen Fellowship Fund, annually supporting two - except as noted - graduate fellows in climate science, in perpetuity. And, earlier this year, Arthur c. H. cheng ScD ’78 launched the Sven Treitel ’53 Graduate Student Support ART & PHOTO RESEARCH Fund and is rallying support from his peers to honor the renowned geophys- Allison Provaire ics alumnus. Other exciting news about fellowships will be announced soon. To acknowledge all of our leading fellowship donors, in the spring we will launch the EAPS Patrons’ circle, honoring their contributions and providing a celebra- EAPS Scope is published annually by the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and tory opportunity for them to meet “their” students. With help from our friends, Planetary Sciences. We welcome your news my goal is to continue to build fellowship resources until we can support all and comments. Please send correspondence to: [email protected] EAPS graduate students throughout the two years before their qualifying exam. Having assured “no-strings-attached” funding, regardless of the restrictions of For up-to-the-minute EAPS news, please visit grant funding, enables EAPS to continue to attract the best and brightest stu- our website: eapsweb.mit.edu/news dents, and allows them the freedom to explore their strengths. Follow us on Facebook: I thank you all for supporting the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and facebook.com/EAPS.MIT Planetary Sciences, and hope that our paths cross during the coming year! If you have not been receiving the biannual online version of EAPSpeaks, please e-mail: Sincerely yours, [email protected] Better yet, register for a permanent @alum.mit.edu e-mail alias on the MIT Alumni Association website: Rob van der Hilst alum.mit.edu/benef ts/AlumniBenef ts EAPS Department Head and Schlumberger Professor of Earth Sciences 2 EAPS ScOPE | 2014-2015 EARTH, ATMOSPHERIc AND PlANETARy ScIENcES | MIT ScHOOl OF ScIENcE 3 cONTENTS 4 FEATURE STORY — EARTH: INSIDE-OUT can’t see it. can’t touch it. How can we know what’s going on inside? EAPS geoscientists have the tools and tenacity to tease apart just how the interior of Earth works. page 4 8 EAPS FACULTY NEWS 2014 was another year of notable faculty achievements. We greeted a new member while three of our current faculty were awarded tenure, and numerous prestigious distinctions were earned. 12 RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT: BUILDING AFRICA’S FIRST CLIMATE OBSERVATORY No long-term greenhouse gas observing station exists on the entire African continent—covering a ffth of the world’s land area, this is no small piece of lost data. EAPS grad student, Jimmy Gasore, is working to change that. page 24 14 RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT: MEASURING THE MIGRATION OF A RIVER Taylor Perron’s group reveals how river networks transform the landscape on a geologic time-scale, sometimes in unexpected ways. page 14 page 16 16 RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT: WEIGHT OF THE WORLD Until now, determining the masses of smaller, potentially life-supporting exoplanets has been a challenge—EAPS graduate student Julien de Wit and supervisor Sara Seager propose a promising new technique to overcome this. 18 DEGREES AWARDED In the 2013-14 academic year EAPS awarded 43 degrees—from PhD to Master’s and Bachelor’s—showcasing an impressive range of thesis topics. page 12 20 EVENTS, ALUMNI & FRIENDS Read more about EAPS’ year full of riveting feature lecture events, exciting new fellowship opportunities, and good news from friends. 2 EAPS Sc OPE | 2014-2015 EARTH, ATMOSPHERIc AND Pl ANETARy Sc IENc ES | MIT Sc HOOl OF Sc IENc E 3 EARTH: INSIDE-OUT How do you look inside a rock the size of a planet? By Helen Hill, EAPS Science Writer Image credit, iStockPhoto 4 EAPS Sc OPE | 2014-2015 EARTH, ATMOSPHERIc AND Pl ANETARy Sc IENc ES | MIT Sc HOOl OF Sc IENc E 5 EARTH: INSIDE-OUT How do you look inside a rock the size of a planet? By Helen Hill, EAPS Science Writer OOkING INSIDE THE earth Sven Trietel ’53, SM ’55, PhD ’58 (this issue), using seismic or other forms of and contemporaries in the MIT Geophysical geophysical imaging has impor- Analysis Group (GAG), can be credited with tant applications in the search establishing digital subsurface mapping as for and responsible extraction of a central technique underpinning much of lnatural resources like oil, gas, mineral depos- modern oil and gas exploration. its and water. It has a role too in improv- Today, members of what ultimately has ing scientists’ understanding of geologic become EAPS, many of them affliated with hazards, such as enabling them to predict the the Earth Resources laboratory (ERl), carry ground motion in an earthquake. It also pro- that torch forward. As MIT’s primary home vides data leading to a deeper understand- for research and education focused on sub- ing of the fundamental processes at work in surface energy resources, researchers in the heart of our planet with implications for ERl combine contemporary advances in planetary science in general. geophysical imaging with rock physics and MIT has long boasted world-class expertise chemistry, multiphase fow, geomechanics, in geophysics, and geophysical imaging. microseismics, and remote sensing to obtain 4 EAPS Sc OPE | 2014-2015 EARTH, ATMOSPHERIc AND Pl ANETARy Sc IENc ES | MIT Sc HOOl OF Sc IENc E 5 a holistic understanding of sub-surface res- images Earth’s deep interior to understand essence of the full expression while minimiz- ervoirs—their structure, the geological mate- more about the thermal and chemical state of ing the computational overhead. Willemsen rials of which they are made, the fuids that our planet and its links to surface processes. benefts from ERL’s interdisciplinary focus, fow through them, and changes that occur Finally, Assistant Professor Germán Prieto often turning to mathematicians affliated with in response to production. (more below) seeks an improved under- the lab, such as laurent Demanet, Assistant standing of the diversity of earthquakes and Professor of Mathematics. For example, cecil and Ida Green Professor the associated ground motions expected of Earth Sciences and Director of the ERl on the surface. lISTENING TO SEE Brad Hager uses seismic data in conjunc- tion with other geophysical measurements Here we focus on the work of three particular Along with destruction, earthquakes provide like GPS to understand surface deformation, EAPS geophysicists developing and apply- scientists with important information about the earthquakes, and dynamical processes in ing the tools and techniques of geophysics structure of Earth’s crust and upper mantle. Earth’s interior. Senior Research Scientist to turn the Earth: Inside-Out. EAPS Assistant Professor of Geophysics Mike Fehler (ERl’s Deputy Director) devel- Germán Prieto grew up in the seismic hot zone ops and tests novel methods for seismic USING MATH TO SEE of colombia, an experience which developed in imaging that can be applied to a number him an early interest in seismology. of problems in reservoir characterization Graduate student lucas “Bram” Willemsen including identifcation of changes in reser- (EAPS’ frst Toksöz fellow) is exploring new Among Prieto’s interests are ambient seismic voirs, identifcation of fractures, and the rela- techniques for estimating elements in the felds. Once regarded as nothing more than tionship of induced seismicity and reservoir approximate Hessian, a matrix operator fun- noise, these signals have recently been structure. Associate Director and chair of damental in numerical techniques used to shown to provide important information about EAPS Program in Geophysics Dale Morgan’s construct velocity models of the subsurface Earth’s structure. Surface wave tomography, research interests, which run the gamut from seismic measurements. The more accu- body wave tomography both for crustal and from geo-electromagnetics to rock physics, rate a velocity model is, the more focused the deep interfaces, crustal anisotropy, attenu- applied seismology to environmental and seismic images will be. ation tomography, and basin amplifcation engineering geophysics, also often rely have all been studied using these signals. heavily on seismic imaging. Schlumberger Exactly calculating and storing all the terms Professor of Geosciences and Head of in this matrix is often too computationally By looking at the spatially coherent signals EAPS Rob van der Hilst, in addition to an demanding.
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