Doug Wiens

The French scientist who was strip searched, detained and deported by US authorities at the airport was a member of my brother Roger’s Mars Rover team. It was data from the joint US-French project. So crazy! nytimes.com/2025/03/21/wor…

Farewell lunch with the seismology group for Zongshan Li. He recieved his PhD last year and is departing this week for a postdoc at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China. @WUSTL_EEPS

Washington University public relations dept posted this story and video about our research cruise near Samoa last November. It’s part of a series they are doing about fieldwork done by researchers and students. source.wustl.edu/2024/09/field-…

The UNESCO Expert Meeting on Tsunami Sources in the Vanuatu and Solomon Islands regions, in Port Vila, Vanuatu this week

I’m in Vanuatu for a UNESCO tsunami hazards meeting, smart cable meeting, and some project planning. Jet lag makes sure one hears all the roosters crowing and sees the beautiful sunrise.

Another finding is that there is almost no seismicity from the Southernmost South America shallow thrust zone. It might be locked, as in Cascadia? There is not enough geodetic data in this remote location to confirm. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Published - Seismicity recorded by our Patagonia seismic array results from deglaciation stresses. Work was done by postdoc Jean-Baptiste in Chile, but he tragically passed away from illness before it was published. @WUSTL_EEPS sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

I’m filling out the ethic origins question for Elsevier. “Select the geographic areas from which your ancestors FIRST originated”. Didn’t we all originate in Africa? How far back do you want to go?

Looks like my paper on wave propagation and movement of the Ross Ice Shelf got coverage in The Daily Mail. I like the caption showing a map of Antarctica and sea ice, saying that the Ross Ice Shelf is "in the south". @WUSTL_EEPS dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ar…

@dougal_hansen @WUSTL_EEPS So happy you will join us - we are looking forward to your arrival!

News article about our study of Lamb wave (plate wave) propagation and repeated "jerks" of the Ross Ice shelf, published this last week in Geophysical Research Letters. @WUSTL_EEPS @WUSTLArtSci source.wustl.edu/2024/03/larges…

@Harold_Tobin Great video. I'll show it today in my Natural Disasters class!

Early warning for Taiwan quake, instantly broadcast on live tv. Note the time the warning appears on screen and then when the shaking starts much later on. Impressive! US ShakeAlert system will provide WEA alert to cell phones, but not yet to broadcast media directly.

Congratulations to my student Zongshan Li on the publication of his paper "Along‐Strike Variations of Alaska Subduction Zone Structure and Hydration Determined From Amphibious Seismic Data" in JGR-Solid Earth agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/20…

The remains of a church on the south side of Upolu island in Samoa. It was destroyed by the 2009 tsunami that was generated by magnitude 8.1 earthquake, followed by a magnitude 8 earthquake a minute later.

Now collecting rocks from the sea floor near Niue island. Got some pillow basalts. I think we should call this “sample return”. It sounds a lot more sophisticated than “dredging”.

Dredging rocks from the sea floor near Rarotonga. Some of the rocks contain green-colored mantle zenoliths, encased in basaltic lava.

@SavageEarth_ An alkali basalt lava flow, from a cone on a mid plate seamount

@dougwiens Fe-Mn nodules?

Rocks, from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

@patton_cascadia Good catch! Matt was just explaining things at that point - he put on goggles for the real cutting.

@dougwiens without safety glasses/mask? (sorry, first thing i noticed; excited about your project!)

We finished all the ocean bottom seismograph deployments, and are preparing to dredge rocks from the sea floor in the Cook Islands. Here Matt Jackson demonstrates the use of the rock saw.