Background

Earthquakes provide us with information about conditions and processes below the Earth's surface, as well as about the elastic waves that are excited and that can be felt far from the epicenter.

To unravel these aspects, we need to understand the processes that occur during earthquake rupture, where large offsets develop behind the rupture front and fluids may be squeezed out of narrow micro-fissures, leading to opening of the pore space.

We develop and apply methods to study the generation process of earthquakes at the highest resolution, even when only remote observations are possible. We often use and combine seismic and geodetic data to map natural and induced seismic activity over a wide range of scales, from mm-scale acoustic emissions to large megathrust earthquakes. Besides tectonic and volcanic earthquakes, we also analyse unusual seismic signals, such as resonating fissures beneath volcanoes or landslides and rock falls in narrow fjords and valleys.

Scientific key questions

• How can we improve the automatic processing and source mechanism estimation of bursts of smallest earthquakes to better understand microprocesses in the earth?
• How can volumetric source components of volcano-tectonic earthquakes be interpreted?
• How can we further reduce the inherent uncertainties of source parameters retrieved from seismic waveforms, especially for automated processing flows?
• How can we resolve the complexity of an extending rupture?
• How can we identify and analyse seismic source processes at remote earth locations?

Related projects

• Chasing | Characterizing source properties of NW Bohemia/Vogtland earthquake swarms exploiting novel network and waveform processing tools
• DEGREE | Digital twin for assessing the exploration potential of geo-resources: Eifel geothermal depth anomaly