Earth
and Space Sciences Faculty |
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John
Booker |
Areas of Interest:
Magnetotellurics, Tectonics, Inverse Theory
Research Group:
Geomagnetism
and Paleomagnetism
Other
UW Academic Affiliations:
Professor, Dept of Atmospheric Sciences
Adjunct Professor, Dept of Applied Mathematics
Adjunct Professor, Dept of Physics
Education:
Ph.D., Physics, University
of Washington, 1971
Current Research:
My main current interest
is geomagnetic induction in the Earth. I was the prime mover behind the international
EMSLAB project in the 1980's to study the electrical structure of the Juan de
Fuca Plate and adjacent continent. EMSLAB imaged electrical structure which
appears to be associated with injection of water into the lower continental
crust during subduction. However, probably the most important result was a dramatic
increase in the visibility and credibility of electromagnetic methods, particularly
magnetotellurics (MT), in the wider Earth Science community.
In subsequent years, I have been involved in a series of large scale MT projects including in Tibet (INDEPTH) and along the San Andreas Fault. I have recently returned from Argentina, where we collected long period MT data along three transects in the Sierra Pampeanas. These are basement block ranges east of a volcanically quite segement of the Andes and overlying a nearly flat-lying portion of the subducted Nazca Plate. The range faults extend at high angle into the deep crust and maybe even to the mantle. The goal of the project is to understand the deformation properties of the lower crust and the mantle between the crust and the subducted slab.
My students and I have also been leaders in the revolution in MT methodology. We have developed a method for inverting induction data for multi-dimensional conductivity structure that is orders of magnitude faster than competing techniques. It is presently the only viable scheme for directly inverting large 3-D data sets. We have also been leaders in introducing robust statistical methods to geomagnetic time series analysis and we have introduced such methods into inversions too. Our work on time series analysis resulted in approximately an order of magnitude improvement in the reliability of MT data without new instrumentation.
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Earth and Space Sciences ( Geology, Geophysics, Geological Sciences) University of Washington Johnson Hall 070 • Box 351310 4000 15th Avenue NE • Seattle, WA 98195-1310 Phone 206-543-1190 • Fax 206-543-0489 • Site Info: webmaster@ess.washington.edu • ESS Advising: advising@ess.washington.edu |