March 19 Lecture – Earthquakes and You: Be a Citizen Seismologist!

Earthquakes and You: Be a  Citizen Seismologist!

with Dr. Peggy Hellweg

Saturday March 19, 2016 at 11:00 AM

159 Mulford Hall, UC Berkeley

Since before seismic instrumentation was developed, ordinary people made valuable contributions to seismology by describing their experiences in earthquakes and the they saw – these reports are still used today to determine approximate magnitudes for past events. Similar reports are still collected, for example in the USGS “Did you feel it” web pages. In the connected world of today, citizen seismologists have new options for participating in advancing our seismological frontiers. Come find out how!

Dr. Peggy Hellwegstudied physics at the University of California San Diego. She spent her junior year abroad at the University of Goettingen, Germany, where she returned after she received her BA. After earning a masters in physics at Goettingen, she turned to seismology and worked at the seismological laboratory of Germany’s Federal Institute of Earth Sciences and Resources. In the mid-1980s, she returned to the United States, where she worked on strong-motion earthquake projects at the United States Geological Survey. She earned her doctorate in 2000 at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, on seismicity associated with volcanoes. Since 2001 Dr. Hellweg is at the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, where she is Operations Manager for the BSL’s network of high quality seismometer/accelerometer stations. She is Project Manager for the Earthquake Early Warning activities at the BSL and spearheads outreach to users of the EEW system, CISN ShakeAlert, in California.   This free public talk is presented as part of the monthly Science at Cal Lecture Series. Event Contact: scroft@astro.berkeley.edu