Geophysics fellow nominations hit by lack of diversity

A section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) has declined to recommend any of its members for a 2021 fellowship following a lack of diversity among potential nominees.

Virtual Advocacy Days for Science in Times of Crisis: Communications and Engagement Influencing Decision-Making

<p>Communicating the value of science to policymakers has never been more importance, but how do you make a difference while adhering to new norms for physical distancing? Regardless of one’s level of technological aptitude, and no matter if time constraints exist, scientists can still effectively communicate the value of their science to policymakers through virtual means. The Public Affairs team from the American Geophysical Union will share lessons learned from several virtual advocacy events held in 2020 and will cover a few communications strategies for influencing policymakers through virtual science policy engagements—from virtual meetings with policymakers to social media to traditional media.</p>

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at AGU: New Leadership Commitments and Progress Under an Updated Strategic Plan

<p>The American Geophysical Union (AGU), a global scientific society of >60,000 members, has a series of initiatives underway to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Earth and space sciences, including the well-known issues of harassment and its impact on women scientists, and the closely related issues of systemic racism, sexism, ableism, discrimination against LGBTQ community, and their related intersectional issues. Building on its earlier work of establishing an updated AGU Ethics Policy which defines harassment and discrimination as scientific misconduct, AGU has taken additional significant steps over the past 12 months to further advance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) practices— including work lead by the AGU Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee to launch a public facing AGU D&I dashboard, steps under the updated AGU Strategic plan to provide additional resources for supporting a more equitable and inclusive culture, and work and commitments by AGU leadership to address systemic racism through its “Eight Deliberate Steps.”  This presentation will highlight new AGU DEI-related initiatives most recently underway, including the role of partnerships in helping to achieve the broader DEI culture change objectives, and the associated work across AGU Meetings, Publications, and Honors. Progress to date on these and other emerging new AGU Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI)-related resources and partnership initiatives, including metrics to track the impact of these changes, will be discussed.</p>

Inspiring creativity in science-inspired art and music in the digital world.

<p>The mission of the American Geophysical Union’s Sharing Science program is to provide scientists with the skills, tools, and opportunities they need to share their science with any audience. While we in the program possess the skills and expertise to do this, we also believe that it’s beneficial for artists to learn from, and be inspired by, their peers. To achieve this goal, we created a digital space for science artists to share their work and creative processes.</p><p>In 2020, we launched two specials series on our blog: AGU Rocks and Drawn to Geoscience. The purpose of these series was to highlight scientists who write songs and create illustrations about science. We not only wanted to showcase the amazing creative work of science artists but also have them explain their creative and technical processes in as effort to lower the barrier to entry for those who may be interested in pursuing similar creative efforts but don’t know where to start.</p><p>By the end of 2020, we received over 40 AGU and Drawn to Geoscience contributions with a queue of posts scheduled for 2021. Because of the huge outpouring of submissions and demonstrated enthusiasm for the content, we are planning to expand this into a hub for all forms of scicomm via art where science artists can learn from, and be inspired by, their peers, and scientists and non-scientists alike can learn about diverse aspects of science in engaging and accessible ways. </p>

Fluid Flux in Fractured Rock of the Alpine Fault Hanging-Wall Determined from Temperature Logs in the DFDP-2B Borehole, New Zealand

©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. Sixteen temperature logs were acquired during breaks in drilling of the 893m-deep DFDP-2B borehole, which is in the Alpine Fault hanging-wall. The logs record various states of temperature recovery after thermal disturbances induced by mud circulation. The long-wavelength temperature signal in each log was estimated using a sixth-order polynomial, and residual (reduced) temperature logs were analyzed by fitting discrete template wavelets defined by depth, amplitude, and width parameters. Almost two hundred wavelets are correlated between multiple logs. Anomalies generally have amplitudes <1°C, and downhole widths <20m. The largest amplitudes are found in the first day after mud circulation stops, but many anomalies persist with similar amplitude for up to 15 days. Our models show that thermal and hydraulic diffusive processes are dominant during the first few days of re-equilibration after mud circulation stops, and fluid advection of heat in the surrounding rock produces temperature anomalies that may persist for several weeks. Models indicate that the fluid flux normal to the borehole within fractured zones is of order 10−7 to 10−6 m s−1, which is 2–3 orders of magnitude higher than the regional flux. Our approach could be applied more widely to boreholes, as it uses the thermal re-equilibration phase to derive useful information about the surrounding rock mass and its fluid flow regime.

The Alpine Fault hanging-wall viewed from within: Structural analysis of the ultrasonic image logs in the DFDP-2B borehole, New Zealand

©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. Ultrasonic image logs acquired in the DFDP-2B borehole yield the first continuous, subsurface description of the transition from schist to mylonite in the hangingwall of the Alpine Fault, New Zealand, to a depth of 818 m below surface. Three feature sets are delineated. One set, comprising foliation and foliation-parallel veins and fractures, has a constant orientation. The average dip direction of 145° is subparallel to the dip direction of the Alpine Fault, and the average dip magnitude of 60° is similar to nearby outcrop observations of foliation in the Alpine mylonites that occur immediately above the Alpine Fault. We suggest that this foliation orientation is similar to the Alpine Fault plane at ∼1 km depth in the Whataroa valley. The other two auxiliary feature sets are interpreted as joints based on their morphology and orientation. Subvertical joints with NW-SE (137°) strike occurring dominantly above ∼500 m are interpreted as being formed during the exhumation and unloading of the Alpine Fault's hangingwall. Gently dipping joints, predominantly observed below ∼500 m, are interpreted as inherited hydrofractures exhumed from their depth of formation. These three fracture sets, combined with subsidiary brecciated fault zones, define the fluid pathways and anisotropic permeability directions. In addition, high topographic relief, which perturbs the stress tensor, likely enhances the slip potential and thus permeability of subvertical fractures below the ridges, and of gently dipping fractures below the valleys. Thus, DFDP-2B borehole observations support the inference of a large zone of enhanced permeability in the hangingwall of the Alpine Fault.

Fluid Flux in Fractured Rock of the Alpine Fault Hanging-Wall Determined from Temperature Logs in the DFDP-2B Borehole, New Zealand

©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. Sixteen temperature logs were acquired during breaks in drilling of the 893m-deep DFDP-2B borehole, which is in the Alpine Fault hanging-wall. The logs record various states of temperature recovery after thermal disturbances induced by mud circulation. The long-wavelength temperature signal in each log was estimated using a sixth-order polynomial, and residual (reduced) temperature logs were analyzed by fitting discrete template wavelets defined by depth, amplitude, and width parameters. Almost two hundred wavelets are correlated between multiple logs. Anomalies generally have amplitudes <1°C, and downhole widths <20m. The largest amplitudes are found in the first day after mud circulation stops, but many anomalies persist with similar amplitude for up to 15 days. Our models show that thermal and hydraulic diffusive processes are dominant during the first few days of re-equilibration after mud circulation stops, and fluid advection of heat in the surrounding rock produces temperature anomalies that may persist for several weeks. Models indicate that the fluid flux normal to the borehole within fractured zones is of order 10−7 to 10−6 m s−1, which is 2–3 orders of magnitude higher than the regional flux. Our approach could be applied more widely to boreholes, as it uses the thermal re-equilibration phase to derive useful information about the surrounding rock mass and its fluid flow regime.

Microseismicity and stress in the vicinity of the Alpine Fault, central Southern Alps, New Zealand

We investigate present-day microseismicity associated with the central Alpine Fault and the zone of active deformation and uplift in the central Southern Alps. Using 14 months of data, robust hypocenter locations have been obtained for ∼1800 earthquakes of magnitudes between -0.3 and 4.2. We derived a magnitude scale with a frequency-dependent attenuation factor, γ(f) = γ0f, where γ0 = 1.89 ± 0.02 × 10-3 s/km, that enables magnitudes to be calculated consistently for earthquakes of different sizes and frequency contents. The maximum depth of the seismicity varies systematically with distance from the Alpine Fault, from 10 ± 2 km near the fault to 8 ± 2 km within 20 km and 15 ± 2 km further southeast. This distribution correlates with lateral variations in crustal resistivity: earthquake hypocenters are concentrated in areas of strong resistivity gradients and restricted to depths of resistivities >100 Ωm. Rocks at greater depth are too hot, too fluid-saturated, or too weak to produce detectable earthquakes. Focal mechanism solutions computed for 211 earthquakes (ML > 0.44) exhibit predominantly strike-slip mechanisms. We obtain a maximum horizontal compressive stress direction of 115 ± 10° from focal mechanism inversion. This azimuth is consistent with findings from elsewhere in the central and northern South Island, and indicates a uniform crustal stress field despite pronounced variations in crustal structure and topographic relief. Our stress estimates suggest that the Alpine Fault (with a mean strike of 055°) is poorly oriented in an Andersonian sense but that individual thrust and strike-slip segments of the fault's surface trace have close to optimal orientations. Copyright 2012 by the American Geophysical Union.