As experts in their field, UTIG scientists contribute and review material used in local and international exhibits as well as national broadcasts.
PAST PRESENTATIONS
"Earthquake and Tsunami Hazards in the Caribbean" - Presentation by Paul Mann for UT LAMP (Learning Activities for Mature People). Many of us enjoy quiet vacations lolling on Caribbean beaches in places like Jamaica and the Virgin Islands, or crisscrossing the Caribbean Sea on cruise ships to these and other exotic ports of call. Since many of these popular tourist destinations are at sea level, should vacationers be concerned about being engulfed by a tsunami similar to the December 26, 2004 Asian tsunami that killed so many people in the circum-Indian Ocean region? To address these concerns, Dr. Paul Mann will deliver a lecture entitled, "Earthquake and Tsunami Hazards in the Caribbean", to members of UT LAMP. His presentation will provide an overview of the active tectonic setting of the northern Caribbean region, its history of its past earthquakes and tsunamis and its potential for future catastrophes, including whether far-traveled tsunamis originating in the Caribbean could threaten the southern and eastern coast of the USA.
Cliff Frohlich taught a 6-week course on "Earthquakes in Texas and the World" for UT Odyssey in fall 2005. Odyssey is a noncredit, personal enrichment program that springs from the rich convergence of ideas and research continuously nourished in the academic environment.
"Uncertainties of Model Predictions of Climate in the 21st Century" - UT LAMP (Learning Activities for Mature People).
Dr. Charles Jackson presented this lecture on April 17, 2003.
EXHIBITS
OCEAN PLANET - Smithsonian.
UTIG researchers participated in planning and generating material for this Smithsonian traveling exhibition.
Our Dynamic Earth - UK Millenium Project.
UTIG's PLATES research staff contributed educational material for this exhibit that opened in Edinburgh, Scotland, in May 1999.
Waltz Across Texas - Texas Memorial Museum, The University of Texas at Austin.
This exhibit (Feb.-Dec. 2000) featured a computerized PLATES animation that chronicles the tectonic plate movement of Texas over the last 750 million years.
MOVIES
America"s Tsuanmi: Are We Next? - Darlow Smithson Productions/Discovery Channel/BBC BBC One in the UK/ ProSieben in Germany (first broadcast nationally in the U.S. on the Discovery Channel on December 18, 2005).
America"s Tsuanmi: Are We Next? follows an international team of 27 scientists, including UTIG geophysicists James Austin and Steffen Saustrup, on an expedition aboard a deep-water research ship, the MV Performer, in the Indian Ocean as they explored and reconstructed the geological forces that caused the Indonesian tsunami. Kate Moran from the University of Rhode Island led the expert scientific team.
Their findings reveal new evidence that seafloor uplift from the 9.2 magnitude Great Sumatra earthquake-not a giant underwater landslide as previously thought-caused the devastating December 26, 2004, Asian tsunami. Tsunami wave modelers have used data from gathered by the expedition to improve computer-generated tsunami wave models and better predict the next tsunami wave.
The scientists point to the northwest region of the United States (northern California and coastal areas of Oregon and Washington) as being most at risk for a tsunami event because its fault lines are a mirror image of those in the Indian Ocean subduction zone.
"Garden of Eden" - NOVA.
The PLATES research staff contributed to the public television science program NOVA’s documentary on the Seychelles (first broadcast nationally in November 2000).