Carl Tape's webpage

Carl Tape's webpage
Postdoctoral Fellow
Harvard University
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Email	carltape(a)fas.harvard.edu
Mailing Address	Harvard EPS 20 Oxford St. Cambridge, MA 02138
Office Location	Museum of Natural History Building, Room 211A (map of Harvard)
Phone	617.496.3835 (office)
Research, etc	resume (CV) --- research links
Other things	photos --- my links

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I am a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, collaborating with John Shaw and Andreas Plesch on a project to construct a 3D crustal and upper mantle model for California, with emphasis on the Great Valley and its basins. Our objective is to assess the 3D model by performing numerical simulations of previous earthquakes, and then comparing the simulated seismograms with the recoded seismograms.

In April 2009, I completed my PhD in geophysics at the Seismological Laboratory at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. At Caltech I was part of the Theoretical and Computational Seismology group headed by Jeroen Tromp. The Seismological Laboratory is part of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech.

I was raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, and went to Carleton College and University of Oxford, prior to coming to Caltech.

Research interests:

Broadly speaking, I am interested in seismic tomography and seismic wave propagation. In many aspects, these topics go hand-in-hand: by using an accurate representation of seismic wave propagation (the forward problem) in a seismic tomography study (the inverse problem), it should be possible to obtain accurate and well-resolved images of the Earth's interior. We have implemented an adjoint method into 2D and 3D spectral-element method (SEM) codes. I have applied this technique in southern California to obtain a significantly improved 3D model of the crust; please follow the links here for details.

I am also working on a project with Mark Simons and Pablo Muse on a multi-scale analysis of GPS surface velocity field data (see paper here), and a project on subduction zone parameters with Mike Gurnis, Hiroo Kanamori, and Mark Simons.

Previous work:

PhD thesis, Caltech, Seismic Tomography of Southern California Using Adjoint Methods, here.
Master's thesis, University of Oxford, Waves on a Spherical Membrane, here.
Faults and fault rock in the vicinity of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, here.
Tides and tidal sedimentation, here.
Mirages, here.

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Snapshot of a wavefield simulation for an earthquake in southern California.
This earthquake was used in the tomographic inversion presented here.
Image credit: Santiago Lombeyda, Center for Advanced Computing Research, Caltech.

This spectacular USGS photo shows a massive landslide covering Black Rapids Glacier,
resulting from the M7.9 Denali Fault Earthquake (03 Nov 2002), central Alaska.
The fault zone runs parallel to this glacial valley in the Alaska Range.

My brother and I watched four coyotes tree this bobcat at Joshua Tree, just after sunrise.
Go here for some links to photos of some of my favorite places.
Photo: Ken Tape

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