Lucy Flesch
Purdue University, IN·Earth & Environmental Science
The Arctic margins of Russia, Alaska and Canada have active faults and earthquakes. These are driven by a mix of forces acting on Earth's crust.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Physics
- Topics
geodynamics
tectonics
geophysics
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Build a regionally consistent, multi-plate velocity field for the Arctic by combining GPS measurements with mid-ocean ridge spreading rates that record motion over hundreds of thousands of years.
- Model the Arctic as fault-bounded blocks and use the GPS velocity map to estimate slip rates on active faults, informing earthquake risk.
- Run instantaneous and time-dependent 3-D geodynamic simulations, constrained by seismic data on lithosphere geometry and strength, to test how gravity on Arctic topography and Gakkel ridge opening shape forces in Alaska.
- Test how mantle tractions beneath northern Alaska spread south, whether McKenzie mountain uplift rotates the Bering plate, and whether a subduction zone is forming north of Alaska.
More about the research
Tectonic plates push sideways. The Pacific Plate drags on Alaska as it slides beneath it. Gravity pulls on high mountains. The crust slowly rebounds after heavy ice sheets melted away. New GPS and seismometer data also suggest that slow flow of the mantle, the hot rock layer beneath the crust, drags on the crust's base and helps cause faulting. This collaborative project aims to work out which forces matter most and how large they are.
Why it matters
Estimates of how fast Arctic faults are slipping are important for judging earthquake risk across Alaska, northern Canada and eastern Russia. Learning which forces drive deformation, and whether a new subduction zone is forming north of Alaska, could improve hazard assessments for communities and infrastructure in the region.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Zachary Eilon
University of California-Santa Barbara, CA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Test predicted signatures of dynamic upwelling beneath mid-ocean ridges using surface- and body-wave tomography from roughly 80 ocean-bottom seismometers deployed across the Pacific-Cocos and Cocos-Nazca spreading centers.
Maureen Long
Yale University, CT·Earth & Environmental Science
Image the New England crust at high resolution using hundreds of nodal seismometers spaced 500 m apart, analyzing both distant earthquake waves and background seismic noise to reveal how supercontinent cycles and mountain-building shaped it.
Folarin Kolawole
Columbia University, NY·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether fault motion along the reactivating Davie Fracture Zone varies along its length because of inherited bends and offsets, or stays uniform through local rotations of the stress field.
The school
Purdue University: 43 labs on PI Pages, $932M a year on research, 833 research doctorates a year.
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