Collaborative Research: Seismic Experiment for Eastern Aleutian Subduction Tremor and Earthquake Research

The eastern Aleutian subduction zone is a region that produces significant earthquakes and tsunamis with impacts both locally and throughout the Pacific ocean. This project will use data from ocean bottom and land instruments to study a region extending from the volcanic arc to seaward of the trench in the eastern Aleutians. The scientific results will be used to improve earthquake and tsunami hazard assessment in Alaska. The principal investigators will partner with museums in Alaska and Hawai’i to design and implement education and outreach programs focusing on earthquake and tsunami hazards at subduction zones. This study will deploy broadband ocean bottom seismographs in the eastern Aleutian subduction zone. The new deployment will augment permanent land stations in a region where the overriding plate transitions from continental to oceanic crust. The project will produce a high-precision earthquake catalog, a tectonic tremor catalog, a high-resolution regional seismic velocity model, and constraints on plate interface depth. The results will be used to test the hypothesis that variability associated with the contrast between an overriding continental and oceanic plate is the primary driver of along-strike variability in megathrust earthquake rupture, background seismicity, plate coupling, and tectonic tremor in the eastern Aleutians. This project is jointly funded by the Marine Geology and Geophysics program and the Structure and Physics of the Solid Earth program. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.