Diego Melgar, the Ann and Lew Williams Chair of Earth Sciences, is a champion for change
“I’m not much fun at parties,” admits Diego Melgar. “I spend most of my time talking about natural disasters.”
As the newly appointed Ann and Lew Williams Chair of Earth Sciences, Melgar studies big earthquakes and tsunamis—when and where they’re happening, and how to warn us as early as possible.
It’s when it happens, not if, says Melgar. Odds are one in three that the Pacific Northwest will be hit by the big one within the next 50 years. “You shouldn’t be afraid though,” Melgar is quick to add. “Because knowledge is power. The more we learn and improve alert systems and infrastructures, the better we should feel about living near the Cascadia Subduction Zone.”
In that zone, which spans from Vancouver Island to Northern California, two massive tectonic plates converge beneath the Pacific Ocean. One is slowly slipping under the other, creating the kind of seismic activity that fascinates Melgar and his research colleagues around the world.
Melgar joined the UO faculty in 2017 and recently became the inaugural recipient of a new endowed chair established by an estate gift from Ann and Lew Williams. Longtime contributors to the university, the Williams, both deceased, lived in Eugene before moving to the Palm Springs area.
“I’m grateful for this recognition from the university for our important work,” Melgar says. “This kind of support means a lot.”
In addition to salary, the chair provides a research stipend. Melgar plans to use these funds for student researchers and computer equipment.
“I can’t do it all on my own,” Melgar says. “So the more focused and engaged my graduate students are, the more I can accomplish from my research ideas.
“The students have a lot of ambition and idealism. It’s rewarding to see them grow into independent scientists. It’s exhilarating to make new discoveries, but helping students—as I was helped as a student—is a long-term reward.”
Thanks to donor support, rigorous faculty recruitment, and collaboration across disciplines, the UO is a rising star in earth science, Melgar says. The team is garnering grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US Geological Survey, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and others.
“It’s an embarrassment of riches,” he says. As these resources are put to good use, Melgar adds, they’re leading to even more research success—and benefits to society.
For example, UO researchers played a pivotal role in developing ShakeAlert, an earthquake early warning system for the Pacific Northwest that was recently made available to the public’s wireless devices in Oregon. And the UO is part of an effort funded by the National Science Foundation to help communities prepare for earthquakes and secure electrical power systems.
“This feels like the golden era for earth sciences at the UO,” Melgar says. “There’s a positive feedback loop with new faculty members joining us, a collegial research environment, and everyone working very hard.”
Also, says Melgar, interdisciplinary is more than just a higher education buzzword on this campus. The UO boasts a well-deserved reputation for authentic collaboration across scientific fields.
For example, Melgar crunches a lot of data. With electromagnetic waves at frequencies used for radar and optical lasers, he studies the movement of the earth’s surface at a scale of centimeters. Using US Air Force satellites, he can observe shifts along the coast in real time. And sensors under 10,000 feet of sea water gather information for Melgar from the ocean floor.
Specialists in the UO’s Data Science Initiative help him make the most of all those numbers, contributing not just technical expertise, but also innovative ideas. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are transforming seismology, Melgar says. These cutting-edge techniques are making it possible for scientists to discover new patterns and create algorithms that will outperform current methods.
“It’s all very encouraging,” he says. “This combination of data science and earth science is going to be huge. I’m not a data scientist, but those experts are just a short walk from my office.”
In addition to this collaborative research culture, what attracted Melgar to the UO is a potent combination of basic and applied science.
“We’re asking fundamental questions about why things are the way they are. But the university also has a longstanding tradition of working on science questions that are relevant to society.”
And Melgar knows, first hand, how understanding earthquakes can affect society.
Growing up in Mexico City, he was two years old when the massive 1985 earthquake killed more than 10,000 and injured tens of thousands more. Although he remembers the earth shaking during those terrifying moments, what struck him most were aftershocks that can’t be measured on the Richter scale—the long term impact on communities during years of recovery.
People suffered and adapted while power and water supplies were slowly restored. Schools and hospitals took a long time to become fully operational. Thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed, and many were completely abandoned.
This long, slow return to normal had a profound effect on Melgar. Although much of his research focuses on how to save lives by adding mere seconds to early warning systems, he also works on low tech, long-term solutions.
These include research that can ultimately be used to improve building codes that can, for example, make buildings more stable and help electrical utilities mitigate damage and bounce back sooner. There are also steps we can take as individuals, Melgar says.
He urges homeowners to secure hot water heaters and look into earthquake retrofitting. Don’t wait, he says, because (even if we don’t know when) the big one is coming.
“In the 1980s, scientists didn’t think an earthquake like the one in Mexico was possible,” he says. “But they learned from that tragedy and adapted as a result.
“It wasn’t until the 1990s that most people in the Pacific Northwest realized a major event is imminent. It could be next week or decades from now. But we can adapt, improve, and get ready. We are not static as a society.”
In college, Melgar began studying physics. But then he discovered geophysics.
“I got to hike and be outside. It involved the earth. Once I got into fieldwork, that sealed the deal. I can put my instruments in the ground, get the data, and analyze it? I knew this was how I wanted to spend my days.” After graduating from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Melgar earned his PhD at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. He was a research geodesist at the University of California, Berkeley before joining the UO faculty as an assistant professor.
Melgar says he never stops thinking about science, but he can’t sit at a computer all day. He still enjoys being outside—cycling, hiking in the Willamette Valley, and cross-country skiing with his wife and Sitka, their rescue dog.
He’s the 2016 recipient of the Charles F. Richter Early Career Award from the Seismological Society of America and has served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Solid Earth Geophysics. Melgar’s successful 2019 NASA grant, which explores the use of global positioning systems for tsunami warnings, was based on his PhD thesis.
“We recently received additional funding for that grant,” he adds. “It was very rewarding to have NASA say that my research ideas were viable enough to provide the funding to go ahead and make them real.”
For his latest project, Melgar is examining the past to help us prepare for the future. Historical documents, coastal geology, and tree rings offer compelling evidence of a catastrophic event along the Pacific coastline of North America in the year 1700. It’s widely believed that a major Cascadia earthquake, magnitude 8.7 to 9.2, forever altered the landscape and sent a tsunami speeding to Japan.
Melgar is questioning the widely accepted theory that this was one earthquake along the entire tectonic plate boundary. It may have involved as many as four smaller earthquakes. His discoveries could shape our understanding of earthquakes and how to best protect communities.
“Whether 500 or 1,000 miles of fault broke is a big difference,” Melgar says. “It would shape what we think is possible for the next big earthquake. Understanding the history of earthquakes has all kinds of implications downstream—how we develop the tsunami evacuation maps you see at the coast, building codes, how much shaking a structure can withstand, and more.”
Melgar won’t stop researching our ever-shifting planet from different points of view—from outer space or the bottom of the sea, from hundreds of years ago or hypothetical models of the future. His pursuit of safety and science is, like the earth, rooted in one constant: change.
“The US is one of the world leaders for understanding earthquakes and tsunamis,” Melgar says. “But that doesn’t mean we should be complacent. This is a success story for science, and we’re turning it into something tangible and operational for society.”
—Ed Dorsch, BA '94, MA '99
April 19, 2021