Uri ten Brink
My research focuses on quantifying tectonic and morphological processes and their impacts on the assessments of tsunami, landslide, and earthquake hazards. I am also interested in bridging gaps between disciplines in earth sciences. I am the Project Chief of the USGS Marine Geohazards Sources and Probability Project and in charge of the USGS Ocean Bottom Seismometers.
Biography
EDUCATION
1981-1986 Ph.D. Geological Sciences Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
1977-1980 B.Sc. Geology and Physics, The Hebrew University, Israel
PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS
1991-present Research geophysicist, USGS, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center
2015-2019 Editor in Chief, Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth
1999-present Adjunct Scientist, The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
2013-2016 Professor and Chairman, Department of Marine Geosciences, University of Haifa
2016-present Affiliate Professor, University of Haifa
1991-1996 Consulting Associate Professor, Stanford University
1987-1991 Post-doctoral scholar, Stanford University
1986-1987 Post-doctoral scholar, Tel Aviv University
PUBLICATIONS BY RESEARCH TYPE
- Quantifying tectonic processses
- Quantifying morphological processes
- Processing and modeling seismic reflection and refraction data
FIELD EXPERIENCE
41 cruises (26 as chief scientist)
3 over-ice land traverses, Antarctica (co-chief scientist)
4 Airborne magnetic, land gravity, and land seismic surveys (co-chief scientist)
HONORS
2016 – Fellow, American Geophysical Union
2010 – Senior Scientist (ST), Federal government
2007/8 – Distinguished Lecturer – Seismological Society of America/ IRIS
1996 - Fellow, Geological Society of America
1990 - Royal Society of New Zealand annual prize for Geophysics
Science and Products
Seismic Reflection and Refraction Methods
Seismic reflection and refraction methods are major tools in natural hazard assessments. Useful tools were developed to aid in processing and modeling of these data.
Quantifying Morphological Processes
Quantifying Morphological Processes lays the foundation for a better assessment of landslide hazard and sediment transport for resource utilization.
Tectonic Processes
Geophysical research utilizes analytical and numerical tools to quantify tectonic processes. Basic geophysical research lays the ground for understanding of Earth processes, which affect natural hazards and resource estimation.
Significant Earthquakes on a major fault system in Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Lesser Antilles, 1500–2010: Implications for Seismic Hazard
Earthquakes have been documented in the northeastern Caribbean since the arrival of Columbus to the Americas; written accounts of these felt earthquakes exist in various parts of the world. To better understand the earthquake cycle in the Caribbean, the records of earthquakes in earlier catalogs and historical documents from various archives, which are now available online, were critically...
Caribbean Tsunami and Earthquake Hazards Studies- Models
The Puerto Rico trench exhibits great water depth, extremely low gravity anomaly, and a tilted carbonate platform between (reconstructed) elevations of +1300 m and -4000 m. we suggest that these features are manifestations of large vertical movements of a segment of the Puerto Rico Trench, its forearc, and the island of Puerto Rico that took place 3.3 m.y. ago over a time period as short as 14...
Caribbean Tsunami and Earthquake Hazards Studies-Tsunami Potential
Newly-acquired multibeam bathymetry of the entire Puerto Rico trench reveals numerous retrograde slope failures at various scales at the edge of the carbonate platform north of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The slumped material comprises carbonate blocks, which are cohesive and the edge of the carbonate platform is steeper than most continental slopes, resulting in a higher potential...
Caribbean Tsunami and Earthquake Hazards Studies- Stress Changes and Earthquake Hazard
Strike-slip faults in the forearc region of a subduction zone often present significant seismic hazard because of their proximity to population centers. We explore the interaction between thrust events on the subduction interface and strike-slip faults within the forearc region using 3-D models of static Coulomb stress change.
Caribbean Tsunami and Earthquake Hazards Studies- Seafloor Map
To help understand the origin of the unusual bathymetry, gravity, and vertical tectonics of the plate boundary and to provide constraints for hazard assessment, the morphology of the entire 770-km-long trench from the Dominican Republic in the west to Anguilla in the east was mapped with multibeam echosounder during three cruises in 2002 and 2003. Parts of the Puerto Rico Trench were...
Caribbean Tsunami and Earthquake Hazards Studies
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are located at an active plate boundary between the North American plate and the northeast corner of the Caribbean plate. Plate movements have caused large magnitude earthquakes and devastating tsunamis. The USGS has an ongoing program to identify and map the faults in this region using various geophysical and geological methods in order to estimate the...
Peace and Science in the Middle East
This project is complete and the website is archived and no longer updated.
The ancient cultures of the Middle East and the modern political conflicts there are shaped by a surprisingly diverse and youthful landscape. The landscape of the region is dominated by a narrow elongate...
Multichannel Seismic-Reflection and Navigation Data Collected Using SIG ELC1200 and Applied Acoustics Delta Sparkers and Geometrics GeoEel Digital Streamers During U.S. Geological Survey Field Activity 2020-014-FA, Southwest of Puerto Rico, March 2020
In March 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez (UPRM) Department of Marine Sciences conducted a marine seismic-reflection experiment focused on observing geophysical evidence of submarine faulting and mass wasting related to the southwestern Puerto Rico seismic sequence of 2019–20.
Earthquake magnitude distributions on northern Caribbean faults from combinatorial optimization models
On-fault earthquake magnitude distributions are calculated for northern Caribbean faults using estimates of fault slip and regional seismicity parameters. Integer programming, a combinatorial optimization method, is used to determine the optimal spatial arrangement of earthquakes sampled from a truncated Gutenberg-Richter distribution that...
Geist, Eric L.; ten Brink, Uri S. On the use of statistical analysis to understand submarine landslide processes and assess their hazard
Because of their inaccessibility, submarine landslides are typically studied individually and at great effort and expense to provide knowledge of the specific site conditions where these landslides occur. Statistical analysis of submarine landslide scars can offer generalized perspectives on the processes that initiate submarine landslides and can...
ten Brink, Uri S.; Geist, Eric L. The role of pre-magmatic rifting in shaping a volcanic continental margin: An example from the Eastern North American Margin
Both magmatic and tectonic processes contribute to the formation of volcanic continental margins. Such margins are thought to undergo extension across a narrow zone of lithospheric thinning (~100 km). New observations based on existing and reprocessed data from the Eastern North American Margin contradict this hypothesis. With ~64,000 km...
Lang, G.; ten Brink, Uri S.; Hutchinson, Deborah; Mountain, G.S.; Schattner, U. Numerical characterization of cohesive and non-cohesive ‘sediments’ under different consolidation states using 3D DEM triaxial experiments
The Discrete Element Method has been widely used to simulate geo-materials due to time and scale limitations met in the field and laboratories. While cohesionless geo-materials were the focus of many previous studies, the deformation of cohesive geo-materials in 3D remained poorly characterized. Here, we aimed to generate a range of numerical ‘...
Elyashiv, Hadar; Bookman, Revital; Siemann, Lennart; ten Brink, Uri S.; Huhn, Katrin Mysterious tsunami in the Caribbean Sea following the 2010 Haiti earthquake possibly generated by dynamically triggered early aftershocks
Dynamically triggered offshore aftershocks, caused by passing seismic waves from main shocks located on land, are currently not considered in tsunami warnings. The M7.0 2010 Haiti earthquake epicenter was located on land 27 km north of the Caribbean Sea and its focal mechanism was oblique strike-slip. Nevertheless, a tsunami recorded on a...
ten Brink, Uri S.; Wei, Yong; Fan, Wenyuan; Granja-Bruna, Jose-Luis; Miller, Nathaniel C. Along-strike segmentation in the northern Caribbean plate boundary zone (Hispaniola sector): Tectonic implications
The North American (NOAM) plate converges with the Caribbean (CARIB) plate at a rate of 20.0 ± 0.4 mm/yr. towards 254 ± 1°. Plate convergence is highly oblique (20–10°), resulting in a complex crustal boundary with along-strike segmentation, strain partitioning and microplate tectonics. We study the oblique convergence of the NOAM and CARIB plates...
Rodríguez-Zurrunero, A.; Granja-Bruña, J.L.; Muñoz-Martín, A.; LeRoy, Sarah; ten Brink, Uri S.; Gorosabel-Araus, J.M.; Gómez de la Peña, L.; Druet, M; Carbó- Gorosabel, A. Semi-automated bathymetric spectral decomposition delineates the impact of mass wasting on the morphological evolution of the continental slope, offshore Israel
Understanding continental slope morphological evolution is essential for predicting depositional systems and reservoirs in the adjacent basin. However, present-day slope seafloor-morphology is complicated by shaping processes, which are not readily separable through pure bathymetric analysis. This study aims to explore the utility of bathymetric...
Omri, Godol; Tibor, Gideon; ten Brink, Uri S.; Hall, John K.; Groves‐Gidney, Gavrielle ; Bar-Am, Gideon; Hubscher, Christian; Makovsky, Yizhaq Offshore landslide hazard curves from mapped landslide size distributions
We present a method to calculate landslide hazard curves along offshore margins based on size distributions of submarine landslides. The method analyzes ten different continental margins, that were mapped by high-resolution multibeam sonar with landslide scar areas measured by a consistent GIS procedure. Statistical tests of several different...
Geist, Eric L.; ten Brink, Uri S. Slope failure and mass transport processes along the Queen Charlotte Fault, southeastern Alaska
The Queen Charlotte Fault defines the Pacific–North America transform plate boundary in western Canada and southeastern Alaska for c. 900 km. The entire length of the fault is submerged along a continental margin dominated by Quaternary glacial processes, yet the geomorphology along the margin has never been systematically examined due to the...
Brothers, Daniel; Andrews, Brian D.; Walton, Maureen A. L.; H. Gary Greene; J. Vaughn Barrie; Miller, Nathaniel C.; ten Brink, Uri S.; East, Amy E.; Haeussler, Peter J.; Kluesner, Jared W.; Conrad, James E. Deformation of the Pacific/North America plate boundary at Queen Charlotte Fault: The possible role of rheology
The Pacific/North America (PA/NA) plate boundary between Vancouver Island and Alaska is similar to the PA/NA boundary in California in its kinematic history and the rate and azimuth of current relative motion, yet their deformation styles are distinct. The California plate boundary shows a broad zone of parallel strike slip and thrust faults and...
ten Brink, Uri S.; Miller, Nathaniel C.; Andrews, Brian D.; Brothers, Daniel; Haeussler, Peter J. Geologic evidence for catastrophic marine inundation in 1200–1480 C.E. near the Puerto Rico Trench at Anegada, British Virgin Islands
Extraordinary marine inundation scattered clasts southward on the island of Anegada, 120 km south of the Puerto Rico Trench, sometime between 1200 and 1480 calibrated years (cal yr) CE. Many of these clasts were likely derived from a fringing reef and from the sandy flat that separates the reef from the island’s north shore. The scattered clasts...
Atwater, Brian F.; ten Brink, Uri S.; Cescon, Anna Lisa; Feuillet, Nathalie; Fuentes, Zamara; Halley, Robert B.; Nuñez, Carlos; Reinhardt, Eduard G.; Roger, Jean; Sawai, Yuki; Spiske, Michaela; Tuttle, Martitia P.; Wei, Yong; Weil-Accardo, Jennifer Geologic controls on submarine slope failure along the central U.S. Atlantic margin: Insights from the Currituck Slide Complex
Multiple styles of failure, ranging from densely spaced, mass transport driven canyons to the large, slab-type slope failure of the Currituck Slide, characterize adjacent sections of the central U.S. Atlantic margin that appear to be defined by variations in geologic framework. Here we use regionally extensive, deep penetration multichannel...
Hill, Jenna C.; Brothers, Daniel S.; Craig, Bradley K.; ten Brink, Uri S.; Chaytor, Jason D.; Flores, ClaudiaPre-USGS Publications
Rapid-response seismic reflection survey to identify the fault sources of the southwestern Puerto Rico seismic sequence
Intense seismic activity started in southwestern Puerto Rico on December 28, 2019 and is continuing to the present time.
USGS Scientists Find Seafloor Faults Near Puerto Rico Quakes’ Epicenters
Most residents of southern Puerto Rico were startled by the sequence of earthquakes that began Dec. 28, 2019 and included a magnitude 6.4 quake on Jan. 7, 2020. Aftershocks are expected to continue for years, including some relatively strong ones, like a May 2 magnitude 5.4 temblor.
Imaging Israel’s Dead Sea Fault to Understand How Continents Stretch and Rift
Imaging a fault to learn more about tectonic plate motion and improve understanding of hazards
Most-Cited Award for Marine Geology Special Issue: “Tsunami Hazard along the U.S. Atlantic Coast”
This USGS-led special issue was published in 2009 and was among the journal’s three most-cited special issues in 2016 and 2017.
USGS Scientists Elected as AGU Fellows
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) will honor newly elected fellows at the upcoming 2016 Fall Meeting in San Francisco.