16 June 2025— Roland Bürgmann, professor at the University of California, Berkeley Department of Earth and Planetary Science and the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory and head of the Active Tectonics group at UC Berkeley, will deliver the opening keynote at SSA’s Environmental Seismology meeting. SSA spoke with him to hear more about his plans for the talk and what he’s looking forward to at the meeting.
SSA: What’s the topic of your keynote?
Bürgmann: Some of the work we have been doing recently involves environmental forcing of the earth, and how in some areas we can see a deformational response to hydrological loading and seismicity varying subtly in response, especially to seasonal changes in hydrological forcing. So I will focus on that, but also include slope failures and landslides. The title of the talk is “Environmental Forcing of Faults and Slow-Moving Landslides.”
SSA: Why do you think this meeting is important to convene right now?
Bürgmann: I see a lot of growing interest in the shallow earth, in using seismology to study surface processes, to explore hydrological processes, to examine slope failures, and just in general to expand from what traditionally was a focus on tectonic features and processes and target a broader array of systems in the shallow subsurface.
SSA: What are you interested in learning more about at this meeting?
Bürgmann: I’m certainly not an expert on a number of topics in the meeting, so that will give me an opportunity to learn … my background is more in geodesy, and more and more we’re trying to integrate observations of seismic sources, microseismicity and geodetic observation to better understand tectonic and non-tectonic systems.
But the other thing that can also really complement that kind of work is seismic imaging, right? Time-dependent seismic imaging, so things like ambient noise tomography and other methods that keep track of changing properties. To me, that perfectly complements what we can learn from accurately measuring deformation at the Earth’s surface in response to processes at depth or, if there is seismic activity, the spatiotemporal variation in seismicity. Some of the sessions are clearly very much focused on seismic imaging, and I find that very interesting.
SSA: Do you see environmental seismology as a growing job field for student and early-career researchers?
Bürgmann: In the context of natural hazards, resources, and environmental protection, this kind of geophysics is much needed. There’s clearly both an applied and a basic research need there that I would think would also translate into job opportunities.
General registration for Environmental Seismology will open 17 June.