Tectonic Geomorphology and Paleoseismology

Tectonic Geomorphology is one of the broadest subdisciplines of the geosciences. It integrates structural geology, sedimentology, geochemistry, landscape evolution, soil science and more to answer big questions about how Earth’s surface evolves over different spatial and temporal scales. REALM Lab asks how Earth surface processes interact with tectonics on the timescale of single events – earthquakes and landslides – and investigates novel approaches to characterizing the attendant hazards. At a fundamental level, this work requires detailed information about active fault behavior using paleoseismology.

This work can be broken down into three main categories (with recent examples – see Publications):

(1) Active fault studies in New Zealand (Delano et al., 2022), Morocco, Georgia (Stahl et al., 2022), and the US Basin and Range (Stahl et al., 2020)

(2) Multihazard models of fault rupture propagation (Walsh et al., 2023) and secondary earthquake effects like floods (McEwan et al., 2023)

(3) Landscape evolution studies of earthquake-induced landslides (Bloom et al., 2023) and fluvial processes (Wilkinson et al., 2021)

Overall, REALM bridges better fundamental understanding of process with useful and usable tools to characterize hazard.