EPSCoR Research Fellows: NSF: Building Fiber-Optic Sensing Capacity in Hawaiʻi for Geophysics and Beyond

This Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) EPSCoR Research Fellows project provides a fellowship to an Assistant professor, and training for a graduate student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. This work is conducted in collaboration with Ethan Williams at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Through the fellowship, the PI will learn to use undersea fiber-optic telecommunications cables as sensors that detect earthquakes and ocean waves. Data collected from seafloor cables surrounding the Hawaiian Islands will provide a dataset for training. Detection of offshore earthquake activity using this novel technology will fill a critical gap in the predominantly land-based earthquake detection systems in Hawaiʻi. The award will strengthen the state’s ability to leverage emerging technology to assess earthquake and related hazards offshore, train students in a technology of growing national importance, and build lasting expertise that seeds new interdisciplinary collaborations. Seafloor distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) enables fiber-optic cables to function as dense, continuous strain sensors sensitive to seismic and ocean waves. Positioned at the center of the Pacific telecommunications network, Hawaiʻi is an exceptional natural laboratory for DAS. This project will establish independent DAS capability in the PI’s research group at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa through extended visits with Ethan Williams at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The PI will develop expertise in DAS instrumentation, data management, noise characterization, and signal processing using data collected from cables offshore the Hawaiian Islands. The project will produce the first DAS-derived local earthquake catalog for the Hawaiian region, advancing understanding of flexure seismicity, a process rarely used in global earthquake catalogs and difficult to fully characterize with existing onshore seismic networks. This work will expand the PI’s research program, develop a transferable analysis pipeline and student training at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, improve characterization of offshore hazards in Hawaiʻi, and seed interdisciplinary partnerships advancing DAS research and hazard monitoring across the Pacific. This project is supported by the EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program: EPSCoR Research Fellows (ERF). The ERF program supports early- and mid-career investigators in eligible jurisdictions to develop collaborations at the nation’s private, government or academic research institutions. 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.