About

Jenny Suckale is an Associate Professor of Geophysics at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Her research focuses on geophysical phenomena, and she is involved in teaching a variety of courses related to earthquakes, volcanoes, tectonics, and other aspects of Earth sciences. Her academic role includes contributing to the understanding of Earth's physical processes through her research and teaching activities.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Geology
• Oceanography
• Mathematics
• Environmental science
• Physics
• Geography
• Engineering
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computational science
• Environmental resource management
• Archaeology
• Algorithm
• Communication
• Parallel computing
• Meteorology
• Mechanical engineering
• Psychology
• Geomorphology
• Mechanics
• Geotechnical engineering
• Seismology

Selected publications

• Late Holocene Stabilization of Conway Ice Ridge

  2025-03-27

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract. Marine ice sheets are low-pass filters of climate variability that take centuries to millenia to adjust to interior and near-terminus changes in mass balance. Constraining these long-term changes from satellite altimetry and velocity observations that span only the last 40 years is challenging. Here, we take a different approach, synthesizing different data sources to infer changes in the configurations of van der Veen and Mercer Ice Streams on the Siple Coast over the past 3000 years. Englacial radar data from Conway Ice Ridge reveal smooth, surface conformal layers overlying disrupted stratigraphy that suggest the van der Veen Ice Stream was 40 km wider over 3000 years ago. Englacial layer dating indicates that the ice stream narrowed to its present configuration between ~3000 and ~1000 years ago. Similarly disrupted stratigraphy and buried crevasses suggest that ice flowing from Mercer to Whillans Ice Stream across the northwestern tip of the ridge slowed shortly after van der Veen narrowed. Using an ice-flow model capable of simulating shear-margin migration, we evaluate whether small changes in ice thickness can lead to large changes in shear-margin location. Our results suggest that the tip of Conway Ice Ridge is sensitive to ice thickness change, and that when the basal strength at the tip of the ridge increases with the ice thickness above flotation, the ice-stream shear margin locations can change quickly.

  PublisherDOI

• Shear‐Layer Thickness and Structure Evolves With Effective Stress in Subglacial Environments

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2025-03-24 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Moving glaciers shear and deform the subglacial till beneath them, with deformation concentrated in a thin shear‐layer. This shear‐layer's properties are partially controlled by effective stress, which depends on ice thicknesses and subglacial hydrological networks. Understanding the relationship between effective stress and shear‐layer thickness helps characterize basal resistance to ice motion and inform subglacial landform formation. While experiments agree increasing effective stresses beget decreasing shear‐layer thicknesses at high effective stresses, a trend is unclear at low effective stresses. Continuum models predict that increased effective stresses yield increasing shear‐layer thicknesses, inconsistent with experiments. Here, we identify how properties of a medium's persistent contact network lead to non‐monotonic shear‐layer thicknesses in effective stress through Discrete Element Method simulations. We find effective stress can alter both shear‐layer thickness and structure, and thereby depth‐averaged friction. We integrate these insights into an existing continuum model by modifying its yield parameters, resolving inconsistency between model and experiment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Integrating water quality data with a Bayesian network model to improve spatial and temporal phosphorus attribution: Application to the Maumee River Basin

  Journal of Environmental Management · 2024-05-16 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Surface water nutrient pollution, the primary cause of eutrophication, remains a major environmental concern in Western Lake Erie despite intergovernmental efforts to regulate nutrient sources. The Maumee River Basin has been the largest nutrient contributor. The two primary nutrient sources are inorganic fertilizer and livestock manure applied to croplands, which are later carried to the streams via runoff and soil erosion. Prior studies of nutrient source attribution have focused on large watersheds or counties at annual time scales. Source attribution at finer spatiotemporal scales, which enables more effective nutrient management, remains a substantial challenge. This study aims to address this challenge by developing a generalizable Bayesian network model for phosphorus source attribution at the subwatershed scale (12-digit Hydrologic Unit Code). Since phosphorus release is uncertain, we combine excess phosphorus derived from manure and fertilizer application and crop uptake data, flow information simulated by the SWAT model, and in-stream water quality measurements using Approximate Bayesian Computation to derive a posterior that attributes phosphorus contributions to subwatersheds. Our results show significant variability in subwatershed-scale phosphorus release that is lost in coarse-scale attribution. Phosphorus contributions attributed to the subwatersheds are on average lower than the excess phosphorus estimated by the nutrient balance approach currently adopted by environmental agencies. Fertilizer contributes more soluble reactive phosphorus than manure, while manure contributes most of the unreactive phosphorus. While developed for the specific context of Maumee River Basin, our lightweight and generalizable model framework could be adapted to other regions and pollutants and could help inform targeted environmental regulation and enforcement.

  PublisherDOI

• Soft matter physics of the ground beneath our feet

  Soft Matter · 2024-01-01 · 8 citations

  reviewOpen access

  The soft part of the Earth's surface - the ground beneath our feet - constitutes the basis for life and natural resources, yet a general physical understanding of the ground is still lacking. In this critical time of climate change, cross-pollination of scientific approaches is urgently needed to better understand the behavior of our planet's surface. The major topics in current research in this area cross different disciplines, spanning geosciences, and various aspects of engineering, material sciences, physics, chemistry, and biology. Among these, soft matter physics has emerged as a fundamental nexus connecting and underpinning many research questions. This perspective article is a multi-voice effort to bring together different views and approaches, questions and insights, from researchers that work in this emerging area, the soft matter physics of the ground beneath our feet. In particular, we identify four major challenges concerned with the dynamics in and of the ground: (I) modeling from the grain scale, (II) near-criticality, (III) bridging scales, and (IV) life. For each challenge, we present a selection of topics by individual authors, providing specific context, recent advances, and open questions. Through this, we seek to provide an overview of the opportunities for the broad Soft Matter community to contribute to the fundamental understanding of the physics of the ground, strive towards a common language, and encourage new collaborations across the broad spectrum of scientists interested in the matter of the Earth's surface.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Deciphering Clues Regarding Magma Composition Encoded in Quartz‐Hosted Embayments and Melt Inclusions Through Direct Numerical Simulations

  Journal of Geophysical Research Solid Earth · 2024-04-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Crystal‐hosted melt embayments and melt inclusions partially record magmatic processes at depth, but it is not always obvious how to interpret this record. One impediment is our incomplete understanding of how embayments and melt inclusions form. In this study, we investigate the formation mechanism of embayments and melt inclusions during quartz growth to quantify the relationship between the compositions of the entrapped and average melt. We study the growth of embayments and inclusions through direct numerical simulations that couple the growth of a crystal surface with the evolution of the concentrations of incompatible components in the surrounding melt. We find that H 2 O is more enriched in the interior of defects on crystal surface compared to the exterior. The resultant lower disequilibrium in the defect interior causes lower growth rate than in the exterior, elongating the defect into an embayment. If crystal growth stops, the composition in the embayment equilibrates with the average melt within days to months. If crystal growth continues until the embayment neck closes, a melt inclusion forms. The melt entrapped by both embayments and melt inclusions is enriched in incompatible components, such as H 2 O and CO 2 . In addition to inclusion size, the enrichment of incompatible components in melt inclusions also depends on component diffusivity and the crystal growth regime. High‐diffusivity components like H 2 O have similar enrichment levels in all scenarios, while lower‐diffusivity components like CO 2 are more enriched in melt inclusions with smaller sizes or formed in continuous crystal growth.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evidence for and Against Temperate Ice in Antarctic Shear Margins From Radar‐Depth Sounding Data

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2024-05-04 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The majority of ice mass loss from Antarctica flows through narrow, fast sliding regions of ice. The lateral boundaries of these regions, termed shear margins, are characterized by lateral shear strains in excess of ∼10 −3 yr −1 . Shear heating within these margins could warm ice significantly–even to the melting point–but other processes such as lateral advection of cold ice and fabric development compete with this effect. Radar observations can help constrain where temperate ice exists because englacial temperature increases electric conductivity which increases radar attenuation. We utilize the temperature‐dependent attenuation of ice to develop a novel method for constraining englacial temperature in shear margins by combining existing thermal models with very high frequency radar depth‐sounding data. We find evidence supporting temperate shear margins in 18 locations and find evidence for non‐temperate margins in 37 locations, notably in the Amundsen Sea Embayment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Moving from total risk to community-based risk trajectories increases transparency and equity in flood risk mitigation planning along urban rivers

  Environmental Research Letters · 2024-05-28 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract After several years of drought, 2023 and early 2024 are reminders of the powers of California’s atmospheric rivers and the devastating flooding they can entail. Aged flood-mitigation infrastructure and climate change exacerbate flood risk for some communities more than for others, highlighting the challenge of equitably mitigating flood risk. Identifying inequities associated with infrastructure projects is now legally required by regional water boards in California, but tools are lacking for making this assessment systematically. We propose that risk trajectories, computed by adding a probabilistic wrapper of flood drivers to models already used in flood-risk-mitigation planning, allows planners to quantify the spatial and temporal variability of risk for communities along river and thereby increase procedural equity by making distributional equity more transparent. While our proposed approach is applicable generally, we demonstrate its impact in the case of San Francisquito Creek, California, where risk trajectories combined with a multi-tier engagement model, helped identify and prevent an inequitable risk transfer.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Spontaneous Formation of an Internal Shear Band in Ice Flowing Over Topographically Variable Bedrock

  Journal of Geophysical Research Earth Surface · 2024-04-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Ice surface speed increases dramatically from upstream to downstream in many ice streams and glaciers. This speed‐up is thought to be associated with a transition from internal distributed deformation to highly localized deformation or sliding at the ice‐bedrock interface. The physical processes governing this transition remain unclear. Here, we argue that highly localized deformation does not necessarily initiate at the ice‐bedrock interface, but could also take the form of an internal shear band inside the ice flow that connects topographic highs. The power‐law exponent n in the ice rheology amplifies the feedback between shear heating and shear localization, leading to the spontaneous formation of an internal shear band that can create flow separation within the ice. We model the thermomechanical ice flow over a sinusoidal basal topography by building on the high‐resolution Stokes solver FastICE v1.0. We compile a regime diagram summarizing cases in which a sinusoidal topography with a given amplitude and wavelength leads to shear band formation for a given rheology. We compare our model results to borehole measurements from Greenland and find evidence to support the existence of an internal shear band. Our study highlights the importance of re‐evaluating the degree to which internal deformation contributes to total deformation in the ice column and to the flow‐to‐sliding transition.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Leveraging Google's Tensor Processing Units for tsunami-risk mitigation planning in the Pacific Northwest and beyond

  Geoscientific model development · 2023-06-27 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract. Tsunami-risk mitigation planning has particular importance for communities like those of the Pacific Northwest, where coastlines are extremely dynamic and a seismically active subduction zone looms large. The challenge does not stop here for risk managers: mitigation options have multiplied since communities have realized the viability and benefits of nature-based solutions. To identify suitable mitigation options for their community, risk managers need the ability to rapidly evaluate several different options through fast and accessible tsunami models, but they may lack high-performance computing infrastructure. The goal of this work is to leverage Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), a high-performance hardware device accessible via the Google Cloud framework, to enable the rapid evaluation of different tsunami-risk mitigation strategies available to all communities. We establish a starting point through a numerical solver of the nonlinear shallow-water equations that uses a fifth-order weighted essentially non-oscillatory method with the Lax–Friedrichs flux splitting and a total variation diminishing third-order Runge–Kutta method for time discretization. We verify numerical solutions through several analytical solutions and benchmarks, reproduce several findings about one particular tsunami-risk mitigation strategy, and model tsunami runup at Crescent City, California whose topography comes from a high-resolution digital elevation model. The direct measurements of the simulation's performance, energy usage, and ease of execution show that our code could be a first step towards a community-based, user-friendly virtual laboratory that can be run by a minimally trained user on the cloud thanks to the ease of use of the Google Cloud platform.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Yih Instability in Layered Lava Flow May Initiate the Pāhoehoe to ‘a‘ā Lava Transition

  Geophysical Research Letters · 2023-05-24

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Most basaltic lavas begin flowing as pāhoehoe but sometimes transition into ‘a‘ā. Field observations and previous models have demonstrated that the rheology of smooth, liquid‐like pāhoehoe is distinct from rough, pasty ‘a‘ā, but the cause of this dramatic and rapidly occurring change in rheology has remained unclear. Here, we propose that the pāhoehoe to ‘a‘ā transition could be initiated by the Yih instability, an internal shear instability, in layered pāhoehoe flow. We show that the conditions under which instability arises depend on both extrinsic and intrinsic factors and derive a non‐dimensional regime diagram. We test the model's prediction of stable flow configurations against field observations of solidified lava flows.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• INSIGT: Investigating Shear-margin Interactions with Grounding-line Transitions

  NSF · $414k · 2018–2024

• Towards a process-based understanding of different eruptive regimes at persistently degassing volcanoes

  NSF · $303k · 2021–2026

Frequent coauthors

• L. T. Elkins‐Tanton

  40 shared

• Zhipeng Qin

  35 shared

• Keiko Hamano

  27 shared

• Anders Damsgaard

  Danish Geotechnical Society

  26 shared

• Masahiro Ikoma

  National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

  26 shared

• Tobias Keller

  23 shared

• Indraneel Kasmalkar

  Earth Observatory of Singapore

  22 shared

• Liran Goren

  Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

  21 shared

Awards & honors

• Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineer…