Collaborative Research: SZ4D Catalyst

Despite the global urgency to mitigate the risk from geohazards, we still have limited understanding of the fundamental drivers behind earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and landslides, and thus their predictability in time and space. The SZ4D (Subduction Zones in Four Dimensions) initiative is a community-driven effort that strives to address this need directly by coordinating and enabling fundamental research on the underlying physical and chemical characteristics and processes specifically in subduction zones.

SZ4D seeks to answer the following questions: When and where do large damaging earthquakes happen? How do trans-crustal processes initiate eruptions at arc volcanoes? How do events within Earth’s atmosphere, hydrosphere, and solid Earth generate and transport sediment across subduction zone landscapes and seascapes?

What fraction of a subduction zone’s energy budget goes into building and shaping subduction zone land- and seascapes? How can we transform the mindset of our geoscience community to embrace education, outreach, accessibility, capacity building, diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice as critical components for the success of the SZ4D and future scientific endeavors by the geosciences community?

Answering these questions will require a substantial infrastructure investment in the form of instrumental arrays accompanied by support for field, modeling and laboratory science.

The expansive vision of SZ4D needs cost estimates, time phasing and project planning in order to prepare for full submission to the Foundation and any partnering agencies. This proposal lays out a plan to accomplish this development quickly. The major components of this proposed SZ4D catalyst effort are: 1) A staffed center that will organize the work and build equity and capacity in the Geosciences (BECG) following a Collective Impact model. 2) Technical project management to realistically evaluate costs and trade-offs of the instrumentation options. 3) Preparatory work for the geological, modeling and laboratory facilities which include workshops and modest engineering design work.

All of these specific activities were strategically selected because they directly affect high-priority elements of the draft implementation plan and have identifiable, tractable development needs that should be addressed prior to launch of a full SZ4D program.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.