Doug Wiens

Had a great week with a wonderful group of Washington University alums, exploring the Antarctic Peninsula. Our ages ranged from 24 to 80, but we all had a great time!

I’m leading a WashU alumni trip to Antarctica. Had this great view of Lago Fagnano while flying into Ushuaia, Argentina. The long narrow lake follows the trace of the Magallanes-Fagnano fault, which carries the motion between the South American plate and the Scotia plate to the south.

At the Eastern Section meeting of the Seismological Society of America at St Louis University. The first Eastern section SSA meeting happened 100 years ago in St Louis.

We are now dredging rocks from the seafloor near Ofu Island in American Samoa. There were a lot of rocks in this one! Fresh basalts with glass, olivine, clinopyroxene.

We recovered all 29 ocean bottom seismographs, after 20 months on the seafloor, no losses! The ship fantail is full of seismographs. Photo shows co-chief scientist Shawn Wei and I with the flag from the last instrument,signed by the science party of the December 2023 deployment cruise.

Recovering an ocean bottom seismographs near Tonga in the South Pacific, aboard the research ship Kilo Moana

The July 29 tsunami from the Mw 8.8 Kamchatka earthquake was recorded by the differential pressure guages on our ocean bottom seismographs near Samoa. Here are the records from the first 4 OBSs we recovered.

Students learning how to communicate with the seismograph on the seafloor using the deck box (sonar), aboard the R/V Kilo Moana in the South Pacific

Recovering ocean bottom seismographs in the South Pacific near Wallis Island. We are 5 for 5 so far.

I’m in American Samoa boarding the R/V Kilo Moana for a 19 day research cruise in Samoa and Tonga. We will be recovering 29 ocean bottom seismographs we deployed 20 months ago, and dredging rock samples from some volcanic seamounts.

Hopefully they are not too dependent on a particular supplier.

I was in IRIS leadership back before the pandemic and moving to the cloud was a long term strategy of both IRIS and UNAVCO 7 years ago. The cloud cannot be destroyed by an earthquake, for one reason!

Tom James organized a great field trip looking at glacial sediments and earthquake faults on Vancouver island. The beautiful weather made it really enjoyable!

At the Pacific Geosciemce Centre on Vancouver Island for a workshop on glacial isostatic adjustment. Lots of discussion about the latest results from Antarctica

In Baltimore this week for the Seismological Society of America meeting. It was great to see some former members of the Washington University seismology group.

The first deployment of the Washington University node (seismograph) array. 45 nodes deployed at Johnson Shut-ins earlier this week to record seismic noise and sediment transport in the Black River.

Unpacking the new Smartsolo nodal seismographs. Sure glad they arrived before the new tariff!

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 Shezhen, China

President Biden Honors Nation’s Leading Scientists, Technologists, and Innovators | The White House Today, President Biden announced the latest recipients of the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation—our nation’s

Congratulations to Richard Alley, on being awarded the National Medal of Science, our nation’s highest scientific honor!

www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo...

I’m moving over from X/twitter. Just too much horrible spam there. Looking forward to seeing you all on Bluesky.