DeFord Lecture Series

DeFord Lecture Series Speaker Schedule

The DeFord (Technical Sessions) lecture series has been a requirement and a tradition for all graduate students since the late 1940s. Once the official venue for disseminating Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences graduate student research, the DeFord Lecture series is now the forum for lectures by distinguished visitors and members of our community. Faculty and researchers from the Jackson School have invited prestigious researchers from around the world to present a lecture in this series. This is made possible only through a series of endowments, such as those funding past Distinguished Lectures.

The list below shows all the scheduled talks this semester. If you would like to meet with any of the speakers, please contact them or their hosts directly.

DeFord Lecture Series 2025 Speaker Schedule

All talks are Thursdays from 4-5 p.m. in the Boyd Auditorium (JGB 2.324). Lectures will be recorded, and most past lectures are posted on the Jackson School YouTube channel.

Jan. 30

Dr. Bayani Cardenas

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Jackson School of Geosciences

University of Texas at Austin

Ridge to Reef Volcanic Hydrogeology: Submarine groundwater in the World’s Most Biodiverse Coasts

Abstract: Water flows from land to the ocean not only through rivers and estuaries but also below-ground through coastal and submarine aquifers. While the global fresh submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is less than 1% of river discharge, it is quite relevant chemically as groundwater nutrient inputs are 25% of riverine inputs. This land-ocean connectivity is important for sensitive ecosystems such as coral reefs if the groundwater delivers solutes that are either critical for or harmful to reef life. Here, we present the interesting but potentially common situation of dramatic SGD in a volcanically active area in the Philippines which has been identified as the world’s most biodiverse coastal area and whose coral reefs provide for local communities.
We studied coastal and submarine thermal springs associated with high fluxes of acidic waters and carbon dioxide, some of which are within or close to thriving coral reefs. The SGD fluxes are amongst the largest in the world and the SGD carbon dioxide fluxes overwhelm coastal carbon budgets. The presentation delivers explanations for the high SGD, discussing the mechanics and different sources and pathways of water, by bringing together multiple lines of evidence from different methods including deep diving, drones, novel sensors, geochemical tracers, thermal remote sensing, and modeling.

Feb. 6

Dr. Peter DeCelles

University of Arizona

Why the Central Andes are Larger than the Himalaya

Abstract: The Central Andean and Himalayan orogenic belts provide an ideal natural experiment to test the potential role of climate in controlling orogeny. Approximately equal in age and along-strike length, both orogenic wedges are forming in plate-marginal convergent tectonic settings: The Andes in a retroarc setting and the Himalaya in a collisional setting against the Tibetan backstop. The Central Andes orogenic wedge is volumetrically and aerially nearly twice as large as the Himalayan orogenic wedge, despite the Himalaya having accommodated at least three times more tectonic shortening. The Himalaya exports at least four times more sediment owing to much greater erosion rates as signified by widespread Cenozoic metamorphic rocks and very young (<10 Ma) low-temperature thermochronologic ages. The Central Andes are thermochronologically old (mostly 20-100 Ma), have no exposures of Cenozoic metamorphic rocks, and are mantled by volcanic and sedimentary rocks, attesting to shallow, slow erosion. The most likely culprit for this situation is the greater intensity of the Indian Monsoon relative to the South American Monsoon since Oligocene time. When viewed as an orogenic wedge that has developed largely after formation of the Tibetan orogenic collage, the Himalaya is neither the largest nor hottest among Earth’s orogens.

Feb. 13

Dr. Yangkang Chen

Bureau of Economic Geology

Jackson School of Geosciences

University of Texas at Austin

AI for Seismology: How to Make it Work for Daily Operation and Better Science

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) has witnessed enormous success in a variety of fields, especially in seismology. It has become widely accepted that deep learning (DL) techniques greatly help routine seismic monitoring by enabling more accurate P- and S-wave arrival picking than traditional methods. However, a completely automatic and in-production AI-driven earthquake monitoring framework has not been reported due to concerns about potential false positives using DL pickers. In this talk, I will introduce a novel AI-facilitated real-time earthquake monitoring framework developed from scratch over the past decade. The choice of optimal DL architecture is based on a decade-long iterative refinement of machine learning models and expansion of the training database. This AI system has been deployed in the Texas seismological network (TexNet) for daily operation. For the West Texas area, the seismic monitoring has been relying on our in-house DL model for reporting earthquakes to the public. For earthquakes with a magnitude above two, the picks are further validated by analysts to output the final TexNet catalog. Due to the fast-increasing seismicity caused by continuing oil & gas production in West Texas, this AI-facilitated framework significantly relieves the workload of TexNet analysts. On the other hand, AI techniques open the door to solving many scientific problems in an unprecedented way, including refining deep earth models with enhanced data preconditioning and iterative solvers, understanding the anthropogenic causes of induced earthquakes, and deciphering the earthquake nucleation mechanisms.

Feb. 20

Feb. 27

Dr. Jean Philippe Avouac

California Institute of Technology

March 6

Dr. Roger Creel

Columbia University

March 13

Dr. Marjorie Cantine

University of Washington

March 27

Dr. Manuele Faccenda

Università di Padova

April 3

Dr. Zhe Jia

University of Texas Institute for Geophysics

Jackson School of Geosciences

April 10

Dr. Mike Ek

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

April 17

Dr. Charlie Kerans

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Jackson School of Geosciences

University of Texas at Austin

April 24

Dr. Karen McKinnon

University of California Los Angeles