Fulbright scholar on cusp of geological discovery
Dr Viete receiving his Fulbright Scholarship from US Ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich.
A Monash University researcher will study at the University of California - Santa Barbara (UCSB), focusing on geological changes caused by devastating earthquakes, after being awarded the Fulbright Victoria Postdoctoral Scholarship.
Dr Daniel Viete, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Civil Engineering, was one of 27 talented Australians to be presented with a Fulbright or Anne Wexler Scholarship for study at leading US institutions in 2013.
Dr Viete will study the deep geology of subduction zones – areas at edges of the Earth's tectonic plates where one plate moves under another and sinks into the mantle.
Large offshore earthquakes that occur within subduction zones, such as those that caused tsunamis off Sumatra on Boxing Day 2004, and off Japan in 2011, have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Dr Viete said metamorphic changes that occur in deep subduction zone rocks may be triggered by temperature and pressure fluctuations caused by large earthquakes.
"I've proposed an alternative hypothesis for the mechanisms that drive metamorphism of deep rocks in subduction zones," Dr Viete said.
"It predicts a more intimate association between large earthquakes and subduction zone metamorphism than in previous models."
Dr Viete will travel to UCSB in August and spend 12 months working with Professor Brad Hacker, an internationally renowned expert in subduction zone processes. As part of his research, he will undertake fieldwork on ancient subduction zone rocks exposed at the surface in Venezuela.
"These rocks contain a record of processes that occurred during subduction in the region when dinosaurs roamed the earth around 100 million years ago," Dr Viete said.
"During metamorphism, these rocks underwent fundamental physical changes. I will consider the relationships between these changes and evidence of deformation potentially associated with earthquakes.
"Theoretically, this work could be used to help develop new methods for identifying rocks and regions that are more susceptible to large, tsunami-generating earthquakes."
The prestigious Fulbright program, the largest educational scholarship of its kind, was created by US Senator J. William Fulbright and the U.S. Government in 1946. Aimed at promoting mutual understanding through educational exchange, it operates between the U.S. and 155 countries.