Earthquake specialist joins The Tribune for a summer of science reporting
My name is Jennifer Schmidt, and I am writing for The Tribune this summer as a media fellow from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
This is the third summer that The Tribune has partnered with AAAS to bring engaging science news stories to San Luis Obispo County readers, and I am thrilled to join the newsroom and explore this beautiful patch of the Central Coast.
All my life, I have been fascinated by rocks and what they can tell us about Earth’s past.
I have climbed mountains in Tibet, hiked fjords in Norway, lasered microscopic mineral grains from the southwestern U.S. and more — all in pursuit of the stories hidden beneath my feet. By probing the Earth’s geologic history, we can learn how to deal with challenges to come.
As an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona, I studied how sandstones on the Colorado Plateau were deposited over millions of years in places like Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon. I also used satellites to track how Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula is slowly rotating clockwise.
I left Arizona for UC Santa Barbara to earn my master’s degree. I spent two years studying rocks in Central Asia that formed miles below the surface and were since exhumed. For my Ph.D., I went to Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. There, I researched how and when Tibet and the Himalayas reached the roof of the world during a 50-million-year-long, slow-motion collision between India and Asia.
When not writing for The Tribune, I am a National Science Foundation-sponsored postdoctoral fellow with Temblor, a Silicon Valley startup that develops earthquake hazard models. There, I communicate new earthquake research to the public.
This role brought me back to California, which is well-known for its frequent earthquakes.
The state is transected by a main fault line that separates two continent-size land masses that are moving slowly past one another. Tremors big and small come from sudden movement along this and thousands of other faults that cut through California. Living in earthquake country has given me additional perspective on some of the natural hazards that are important to Californians.
With support from the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I hope to bring my expertise in earthquakes and other geological phenomena to Tribune readers and will report on natural hazards and other science stories that are relevant to SLO County and Central Coast residents.
Is there a topic you’d like to know more about? Send your science story ideas to jschmidt@thetribunenews.com.
