Heather M Savage

About

Heather M Savage is a Professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. Her expertise includes biogeochemistry, paleoceanography, and environmental and aquatic chemistry. She is involved in research that explores various aspects of Earth's systems, contributing to the understanding of planetary processes through her academic work.

Research topics

• Geology
• Seismology
• Petrology
• Biological system
• Physics
• Materials science
• Geotechnical engineering
• Biology
• Paleontology
• Geochemistry

Selected publications

• Slow slip source characterized by lithological and geometric heterogeneity

  Science Advances · 2020 · 153 citations

  Slow slip events (SSEs) accommodate a significant proportion of tectonic plate motion at subduction zones, yet little is known about the faults that actually host them. The shallow depth (<2 km) of well-documented SSEs at the Hikurangi subduction zone offshore New Zealand offers a unique opportunity to link geophysical imaging of the subduction zone with direct access to incoming material that represents the megathrust fault rocks hosting slow slip. Two recent International Ocean Discovery Progr…

  DOI

• Earthquake slip surfaces identified by biomarker thermal maturity within the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake fault zone

  Nature Communications · 2020 · 41 citations

  9.1 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake. Our results show that multiple faults have hosted earthquakes with displacement ≥ 10 m, and each could have hosted many great earthquakes, illustrating an extensive history of great earthquake seismicity that caused large shallow slip. We find that lithologic contrasts in frictional properties do not necessarily determine the likelihood of large shallow slip or seismic hazard.

  DOI

• Seasonal Slow Landslide Displacement Is Accommodated by mm‐Scale Stick‐Slip Events

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2022-09-27 · 22 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Like faults, landslides can slip slowly for decades or accelerate catastrophically. However, whereas experimentally derived friction laws provide mechanistically based explanations for similarly diverse behavior on faults, little monitoring exists over the temporal and spatial scales required to more clearly illuminate the mechanics of landslide friction. Here we show that displacement of an active slow landslide is accommodated primarily through mm‐scale stick‐slip events that recur on…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Rupture to the trench? Frictional properties and fracture energy of incoming sediments at the Cascadia subduction zone

  Earth and Planetary Science Letters · 2020 · 20 citations

  DOI

• Seafloor overthrusting causes ductile fault deformation and fault sealing along the Northern Hikurangi Margin

  Earth and Planetary Science Letters · 2022 · 14 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Catching the quake: Investigating samples from the JFAST expedition for evidence of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

  NSF · $176k · 2013–2016

• EAGER: Investigating the Thermal Maturity of Organic Matter in Fault Zones with Laboratory Experiments

  NSF · $89k · 2012–2014

• Collaborative research: Investigating effects of geologic complexity on induced seismicity, using M0-M5.7 seismicity from Prague, Oklahoma

  NSF · $98k · 2019–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Hannah S. Rabinowitz

  Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

  58 shared

• P. J. Polissar

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  53 shared

• Laura Wallace

  46 shared

• D. M. Saffer

  40 shared

• Katerina Petronotis

  38 shared

• Åke Fagereng

  University of Cape Town

  35 shared

• Philip M. Barnes

  National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research

  32 shared

• R. M. Skarbek

  Planetary Science Institute

  31 shared

Similar researchers at University of California, Santa Cruz

• Paul L Kochh-80
• Francis Nimmoh-79
• Emily Elizabeth Brodskyh-64