Potential projects for graduate students
Geophysics
- MSc Hydrology of the shallow Alpine Fault zone - how does the fault react to nearby earthquakes? A/Prof John Townend
- PhD Statistics and geophysics Prof Martha Savage or A/Prof John Townend
Glacial seismology
- MSc Combining seismological and geodetic measurements to understand how glaciers move 5. Other topics of student interest related to earthquakes, fault mechanics, stress, ambient seismic noise, geothermal systems... A/Prof John Townend
Microearthquake detection
- MSc Microearthquake detection - finding little seismic needles in lots of noisy hay 3. Apine fault earthquake rupture modelling - what will the next M8 earthquake be like? A/Prof John Townend
Seismic anisotropy
- MSc Analysis of seismic anisotropy on White Island to see if temporal variations in anisotropy accompanied the recent eruption cycles Prof Martha Savage
Seismic structure
- MSc/PhD Seismic structure of the Wellington and northern South Island regions determined from recordings of the Seddon aftershock sequence on a dense array, and from recordings of the SAHKE data Prof Martha Savage
Seismic structure
- PhD Seismological studies of geothermal areas Prof Martha Savage or A/Prof John Townend
- PhD Structure of the Hikurangi subduction margin beneath Wellington Prof Martha Savage or A/Prof John Townend
Seismic velocity structure
- MSc Seismic velocity structure from ambient noise imaging at Rotokawa/Ngatamariki Prof Martha Savage
Seismicity and tectonics
- PhD Seismicity and tectonics of southern South Island, New Zealand Prof Martha Savage or A/Prof John Townend
Seismology
- MSc Moving towards automatic earthquake location and analysis at Rotokawa/Ngatamariki/Kawerau fields Prof Martha Savage
- MSc Seismic reflection profiling in the Kapiti - Horowhenua region
- MSc Slow slip seismology and GPS - Kapiti coast Prof Tim Stern
- MSc/PhD Deep fault drilling project, Alpine Fault Prof Martha Savage or A/Prof John Townend
- PhD Regional tectonic evolution and structure of the offshore Zealandia continent, including Gondwana rifting and Tonga-Kermadec subduction initiation Prof Martha Savage or A/Prof John Townend
- PhD South Westland study of seismicity with Ocean Bottom Seismographs Prof Tim Stern
- PhD Stress, strain and earthquake forecasting Prof Martha Savage or A/Prof John Townend
Volcano seismology
Marine geochemistry
- MSc/PhD Exploring the role of Precession in Driving Tropical Pacific Circulation on Glacial Timescales Dr Dan Sinclair
Title: Statistics and geophysics
Subject: Geophysics
Level: PhD
Summary: students will work on statistical methods of developing and testing methods for determining properties of interest to geophysicists, for example, automatic determination of S arrival times, seismic anisotropy, and earthquake focal mechanisms.
Contact: Professor Martha Savage or Associate Professor John Townend
Title: Seismological studies of geothermal areas
Subject: Seismic Structure
Level: PhD
Summary: in collaboration with Mighty River Power, a large electricity generator, we are developing projects focussed on seismicity and structure around geothermal fields in New Zealand. PhD projects of particular interest include: a) microearthquake characterization of geothermal fields in New Zealand; b) ambient noise imaging of geothermal areas of New Zealand: c) petrophysical characterisation through seismic wave propagation.
Contact: Professor Martha Savage or Associate Professor John Townend
Please refer to the SGEES Scholarship page for scholarship information regarding this project.
Title: Structure of the Hikurangi subduction margin beneath Wellington
Subject: Seismic Structure
Level: PhD
Summary: an international consortium of researchers in New Zealand, the US and Japan has been studying this problem for several years using active and passive seismic methods (the SAHKE experiment). The recent earthquake sequence in Cook Strait and the northern South Island will provide a new set of data for a PhD student to use to accompany the earlier data to compare structures along the strike of the plate with those across the plate boundary. We are particularly interested in the properties of the plate boundary and how they relate to nearby areas of slow slip and to earthquake occurrence patterns.
Contact: Professor Martha Savage or Associate Professor John Townend
Please refer to the SGEES Scholarship page for scholarship information regarding this project.
Title: Seismicity and tectonics of southern South Island, New Zealand
Subject: Seismicity and Tectonics
Level: PhD
Summary: Deformation in southern South Island, New Zealand, has long been thought to be almost entirely focused offshore, along the southern extension of the Alpine Fault and Puysegur subduction zone. However, the thick crust and lithosphere farther east in Central Otago, together with widespread seismicity and geological evidence for young regional uplift, suggest deformation is much more widespread, particularly at deeper levels in the lithosphere. This PhD will take over the running over a newly installed micro-earthquake array as a tool to investigate the tectonics of this region. The study has the potential to integrate many aspects of Cenozoic tectonics right across the southern part of the New Zealand plate-boundary, from the active margin of Fiordland to the continental platform around Dunedin.
Contact: Professor Martha Savage or Associate Professor John Townend
Please refer to the SGEES Scholarship page for scholarship information regarding this project.
Title: Deep fault drilling project, Alpine Fault
Subject: Seismology
Level: MSc/PhD
Summary: several studies addressing the structure and evolution of the Alpine Fault in the South Island are underway, including analysis of data collected in shallow boreholes drilled into the fault in early 2011. Plans are now underway for a deeper borehole targeting the fault at 1.0 km depth (scheduled to commence in October 2014), and students interested in working on the microstructural, seismological, or pressure-/temperature-monitoring data from the boreholes are encouraged to contact us. Additionally, one PhD and one MSc scholarship focussed on Alpine Fault seismicity have been funded: details are available at http://tinyurl.com/AlpineFault-PhD and http://tinyurl.com/AlpineFault-MSc.
Contact: Professor Martha Savage or Associate Professor John Townend
Please refer to the SGEES Scholarship page for scholarship information regarding this project.
Title: Regional tectonic evolution and structure of the offshore Zealandia continent, including Gondwana rifting and Tonga-Kermadec subduction initiation
Subject: Seismology
Level: PhD
Summary: A large dataset of offshore seismic-reflection data has been compiled and new voyages are planned. Students are sought with an interest in the manipulation and interpretation of seismic-reflection, gravity, and magnetic data.
Contact: Professor Martha Savage or Associate Professor John Townend
Please refer to the SGEES Scholarship page for scholarship information regarding this project.
Title: Stress, strain and earthquake forecasting
Subject: Seismology
Level: PhD
Summary: We are developing a new technique for comparing measured and stress and strain fields with those modelled from earthquake scenarios to determine where in the cycle the earthquakes occur. We will start by looking at the SAHKE data discussed in section 3 and carrying out numerical modelling of the Wellington region.
Contact: Professor Martha Savage or Associate Professor John Townend
Please refer to the SGEES Scholarship page for scholarship information regarding this project.
Title: Volcano seismology
Subject: Volcano seismology
Level: PhD
Summary: we are continuing to develop techniques to test whether time varying seismic properties such as isotropic velocity, anisotropy and attenuation can be used to determine changes in the magmatic system underneath volcanoes. Volcanoes in New Zealand and overseas are being targeted.
Contact: Professor Martha Savage or Associate Professor John Townend
Please refer to the SGEES Scholarship page for scholarship information regarding this project.
Title: Exploring the role of precession in driving tropical Pacific circulation on glacial timescales
Subject: Marine Geochemistry
Level: MSc/ PhD
Summary: This project involves the analysis of and/or development of palaeoclimate models to study the role of Precession in affecting tropical climate on glacial timescales. Precession is one of the major components of the Milankovitch hypothesis, responsible for driving global climate on a 22ka cycle. A number of paleoclimate proxies from the tropics reveal that atmospheric circulation is sensitive to precession; however, our understanding of the interplay between precession and tropical systems is far from complete.
Background: The tropical Pacific is an important component of the global climate system, hosting the western Pacific warm pool (which holds the largest body of warm water on the planet) and the South Pacific Convergence Zone (the largest single component of the tropical atmospheric circulation system). Despite this, the importance of the Pacific in global climate has only recently been recognized, and the region is conspicuously underrepresented in palaeoclimate studies. A new high-resolution speleothem record of rainfall in the southern tropical Pacific hints that precession may play a previously unrecognized role in mediating the teleconnections between rapid Glacial climate changes in the high northern latitudes and the response of tropical atmospheric circulation systems.
The aim of this project is to use global climate models and/or archived palaeoclimate model data to examine the role Precession plays in influencing tropical climate systems, particularly those in the tropical Pacific. Students will develop palaeoclimate model runs to study global climate dynamics under two different precession states. Output data will be examined with the aim of comparing correlation patterns between tropical and extratropical climate. This will be followed up by running paired simulations where the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (‘thermohaline circulation’) is perturbed to study how precessional phase affects the global expression of a major climate perturbation.
Skills involved: Students will need an understanding of the global climate system, and experience working in a programming environment and working with numerical models. This project takes advantage of new strategic relationships between VUW and the NIWA High Performance Computing Facility, and will place the student at the cutting edge of global palaeoclimate research. The student will gain experience working within a high-performance computing environment, and state-of-the-art global climate models. The outputs of this project are global in scope and will garner significant interest from international palaeoclimate researchers.
Contact: Dr Dan Sinclair (in conjunction with Prof. James Renwick)