Beyond the “Big Ones”

In thinking about earthquakes, we tend to focus on the big ones. After all, that’s where the damage is done, right? But cumulatively, it’s the smaller earthquakes — however unfelt and difficult to detect — that give us the bigger picture about our planet. Artificial intelligence offers significant potential advancements in detecting those smaller events and, in turn, improves our ability to do detailed imaging of the Earth’s interior and also meaningful hazard assessments for communities potentially affected.

Sankha Subhra Mahanti is a graduate student (PhD) in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona. He is pursuing his PhD in Computational Seismology under supervision of Dr. Eric Kiser in the Global Seismology and Tectonics (GSAT) group. His research primarily focuses on detection of small earthquakes and subsurface imaging in the Andes mountains in South America. Originally, he is from the state of West Bengal in India. Sankha started my PhD journey at the University of Arizona from Fall 2021 after completing my bachelor’s and master’s degree (BS-MS) in Physics from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata in India (2016-2021).