A New Way to Look Inside the Earth

A new computational technique developed by a graduate student at the Jackson School  of  Geosciences means scientists can use GPS and other surface mapping technologies to look inside the planet.

Called deformation imaging, the new technique reveals information about the rigidity of the planet’s crust and mantle — an essential property for understanding earthquakes and other large-scale geological processes.

Simone Puel developed the technique for a s project at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG). A study published in June 2024 in Science Advances, shows it in action.

Puel and his collaborators plugged GPS data from Japan’s 2011 Tohoku earthquake into a computer model they developed. The image it generated revealed the tectonic plates and volcanic system beneath the Japanese portion of the Pacific Ring of Fire. It also revealed an area of low rigidity that’s thought to be a deep magma reservoir feeding the system – the first time that’s been detected using only surface information.

Deformation imaging has several unique advantages over other imaging methods. It provides direct measurements of how rigid the crust and upper mantle is, and it can be used with measurements made by satellites.

Coauthors included Jackson School professor Thorsten Becker; Dunyu Liu a computational geoscientist at UTIG; Umberto Villa, a research scientist at UT’s Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences; and Omar Ghattas a professor at the Oden Institute.