Fault scarps and distributed deformation in the earth
Fault scarps and distributed deformation from the Ridgecrest 2019 earthquakes in California. (Photo courtesy of Michael Oskin)

The Study of Catastrophic Motion: How Earthquakes Grow with Alba Rodríguez Padilla

Quick Summary

  • Doctoral student Alba Rodríguez Padilla studies the physics and geology underlying earthquakes in the lab of Professor Michael Oskin, UC Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
  • Funded by a $90,000 fellowship from NASA, she uses remote sensing technology, in tandem with geological records, to create probabilistic models that predict whether geometrical complexity will stop an earthquake’s it in its track.
  • Her research will help inform policymakers and engineers responsible for creating earthquake insurance policies and building new infrastructure.

Beneath our feet, subtle, almost imperceptible seismic shifts occur daily. The tectonic plates forming the San Andreas Fault, for example, are constantly moving, though only about as fast as human fingernails grow. But as the adage goes, big things have small beginnings. Big things like earthquakes.  

For roughly five years, Alba Rodríguez Padilla, a doctoral student in the UC Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has studied the physics and geology underlying earthquakes in the lab of geology professor Michael Oskin. Her research is two-pronged. One of her projects concerns off-fault deformations, which are distortions, warps and cracks in the Earth’s surface that spiderweb and build up over successive earthquakes. In another project, she studies earthquake gates, which are zones of geometrical complexity along faults. 

“Earthquakes grow by propagating along a fault, so the length of the fault in a way caps how big the earthquake can grow,” Rodríguez Padilla said, noting that earthquakes can also grow by jumping between neighboring faults. “At the same time, faults have bends and geometrical complexities. They are not planes and all these sources of geometrical complexities can either promote or hinder an earthquake’s growth.” 

Funded by a $90,000 fellowship from NASA’s Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program, Rodríguez Padilla uses remote sensing technology, in tandem with geological records, to create probabilistic models that predict whether geometrical complexity will stop an earthquake in its tracks. The research will help inform policymakers and engineers responsible for creating earthquake insurance policies and building new infrastructure.

“These cracks, they threaten infrastructure, and we don’t have a model that accounts for all these widespread cracks,” said Rodríguez Padilla. “The models for displacement at the surface that we use for insurance tend to be very localized. We’re worried about what’s happening on the fault and we’re not really taking into account what’s happening 20 kilometers away from the fault, where we still see cracks associated with the fault.”

Rodríguez Padilla wants to change that.

An education without boundaries

Profile photo of Alba Rodriguez Padilla
Photo courtesy of Alba Rodríguez Padilla.

Rodríguez Padilla was a curious child. The daughter of linguists who encouraged her interest in the natural world, she grew up in Melilla, a Spanish enclave located in Morocco.

“My parents are not scientists so when I’d ask, ‘Why is there a sinkhole there in the landscape?’ They’d be like, ‘Well, what do you think it is? Let’s think about it.’”  

Encouraged by her parents, Rodríguez Padilla took her curiosity by the reins and fashioned it into an academic interest. While studying human ecology at Maine’s College of the Atlantic, she was mentored by Professor of Earth Science Sarah Hall.

“With her, I explored a lot of things,” Rodríguez Padilla said. “I explored volcanoes, I explored glaciers and the imprints they leave on landscapes, but the thing I was really excited about was the mechanics of how things work. What are the physics that drive these processes?”

“That was sort of the underlying question I was interested in,” she added. “And I realized that earthquake research was all about that. Like, how do you make an earthquake? What about thousands of earthquakes? I just got really excited about that.”

After earning a Bachelor of Arts in human ecology, Rodríguez Padilla headed west to California, a state that suffers more earthquake damage than any other in the U.S., according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

“When I applied to grad school, I knew I wanted to do something quite interdisciplinary,” Rodríguez Padilla said. “I wasn’t just interested in a single thing and the reason I applied to UC Davis is my Ph.D. advisor has this track record of doing very diverse things. He’s made amazing advances in remote sensing, but he’s also an excellent field geologist and an excellent statistician.”

Not wanting a cookie-cutter education, Rodríguez Padilla was excited to work with Oskin and invigorated by the potential of an education without boundaries.

Mentoring the next generation of geologists

Alba Rodríguez Padilla looks at a fault
Alba Rodríguez Padilla looks at a fault associated with the San Andreas Fault system near Fort Ross, California. (Photo courtesy of Alba Rodríguez Padilla)

Throughout her doctoral education, Rodríguez Padilla has practiced a pay-it-forward mentality, inspired by the camaraderie of others in her field and the graciousness of her mentors.

Rodríguez Padilla herself has stepped into a mentor role for UC Davis undergraduates. Since arriving at UC Davis, she’s participated in GEL 199, an advanced research course for undergraduates. She’s also a mentor for the Southern California Earthquake Center, a research organization funded by the National Science Foundation and the USGS. Rodríguez Padilla noted that the center provides stipends for its undergraduate researchers, allowing them to focus on research without too much financial worry.

“The earthquake research community is extremely welcoming and collaborative,” Rodríguez Padilla said. “A lot of the work that I’ve done has been possible due to other people very kindly sharing their data, sharing their code and sharing their methods.”

“I really feel like my science is building on this community effort,” she added.  

Learn more about Rodríguez Padilla on her website.

Primary Category

Secondary Categories

Science

Tags