The geology lecture series at Southwestern Oregon Community College continues on Saturday, January 18th at 7:00 pm with “Mitigating Disasters: Earthquake Response in the 21st Century” by Dr. Gavin Hayes. This free lecture is at the Hales Center for the Performing Arts on the SWOCC campus and is open to all members of the community. Dr. Hayes earned BS and MS degrees from the University of Leeds and a PhD from Pennsylvania State University. Gavin is a research geophysicist with the USGS National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) and adjunct faculty at the Colorado School of Mines. His work focuses on issues relating tectonics, earthquake seismogenesis, and earthquake hazards mainly in the context of global subduction zones. Since joining the NEIC, Gavin has developed approaches to constrain the three-dimensional geometry of subducting plates from their shallowest definition at oceanic trenches, to their deepest seismic extent in the mid-mantle. Using these approaches he created and manages the “Slab1.0” database. Gavin is also a senior scientist heavily involved in the real time response to earthquakes at the NEIC, helping to rapidly characterize the source properties of earthquakes to provide the public, press and scientific community a comprehensive understanding of why a specific event has occurred. All of the talks are free and start at 7:00 pm in the Hales Center for the Performing Arts on the SWOCC Campus. Continuing sponsors of the lecture series include Oregon Resources Corporation, the SWOCC Foundation and the College. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology and Seismological Society of America’s Distinguished Lectures Series. For a decade, the IRIS/SSA lecture series has enabled world-renowned scientists to travel and speak to public audiences about cutting-edge earthquake research. Additional talks scheduled for 2014 include Dr. Peter Clark (Oregon State University) on the relationships between climate change and sea level on March 1st and Dr. Giora Proskurowski (University of Washington) on May 17th, 2014 discussing plastics in the oceans. For additional information contact Ron Metzger at 541-888-7216.
