Shinji Toda

My research encompasses the disciplines of paleoseismology or the study of prehistoric and ancient earthquakes, as well as earthquake geophysics. This means I spend part of my time digging trenches across active faults in Japan, California, and Turkey, and the rest of the time in front of a computer simulating the behavior of these faults during earthquakes. Because of my frequent collaboration with Ross Stein, Tom Parsons, and Jim Dieterich, I come to California 3-4 times a year for extended stays. I also spent 18 months at the USGS in 1996-97.

My key research objective is to understand how faults interact over both geologic timescales (millions of year) and seismic timescales (minutes to years). To this end, I have led the development of an interactive software tool, Coloumb 2.0, to model stress transfer from one earthquake to the next, or from one fault to the next. The software also enables us to study how eruptions trigger earthquakes, or vice versa. My research has been funded by Japanese and US. public utilities (CRIEPI in Japan and PG&E in the U.S.); by the Japanese government, and by SwissRe, a Zurich-based insurance conglomerate.

Phone: +81-29-861-3691
e-mail: s-toda@aist.go.jp

Mailing address: Active Fault Research Center, Geological Survey of Japan, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)
Site 7, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 205-8567 Japan