Faculty/Staff

Louie, John

Status: Professor

Professor of Geophysics

217 Laxalt Mineral Engineering Bldg.

Nevada Seismological Laboratory

Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering

Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering

College of Science, University of Nevada, Reno MS 0174

1664 N. Virginia Street

Reno, NV 89557-0141

Voice: (775) 784-4219

Fax: (775) 784-4165 or -1833

Always send a cover page with: ``J. Louie, MS 174''

Lab Secretary: (775) 784-4975

Email: louie@seismo.unr.edu

Skype Name: johnnlouie (not online often)

John is a faculty member of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory and the Dept. of Geological Sciences and Engineering in the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, College of Science at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The goal of my research is to accurately image and characterize subsurface structures and conditions in seismically difficult areas, with high-resolution experiments. I constrain these observations with independent geophysical and geological data. The seismic characterization, imaging, tomography, and monte-carlo optimization techniques I develop improve the productivity of resource exploration and development, and of hazards assessments. In particular I try to describe the characteristics of earthquake faults and of sites in order to mitigate seismic hazards to life and property; and seismically image geothermal resources.

Key Words: geophysics, seismology, resource exploration and development, seismic reflection, geophysical imaging and inversion, tomography, modeling, scientific visualization, earthquake hazards and zonation, parcel mapping, ReMi, tectonics.

John teaches:

Geol492/692, Applied Geophysics, offered every Spring semester. Attendance at Spring Break field exercise is required.

Geol 706, Geophysical Series, Filtering, and Introduction to Imaging, to be offered Fall 2010. Interactive imaging exercises in Java.

Geol 757, Advanced Seismic Imaging and Tomography, next offered Fall 2011. See resources for geophysical field work.

John's selected recent papers are:

Zohar Gvirtzman and John N. Louie, 2010, 2D analysis of earthquake ground motion in Haifa Bay, Israel: Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 100,733?750, doi: 10.1785/0120090019.

P. H. Cashman, Trexler, J.H., Jr., Muntean, T.W., Faulds, J., Louie, J., and Oppliger, G., 2009, Neogene tectonic evolution of the Sierra Nevada - Basin and Range transition zone at the latitude of Carson City, Nevada: in Geol. Soc. Amer. Special Paper 447, Late Cenozoic Structure and Evolution of the Great Basin-Sierra Nevada Transition, p. 171-188, doi:10.1130/2009.2447(10).

Donghong Pei, John N. Louie, and Satish K. Pullammanappallil, 2009, Erratum to Improvements on Computation of Phase Velocities of Rayleigh Waves Based on the Generalized R/T Coefficient Method: Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 99, 2610-2611.

Donghong Pei, John N. Louie, and Satish K. Pullammanappallil, 2008, Improvements on computation of phase velocities of Rayleigh waves based on the generalized R/T coefficient method: Bull. Seismol. Soc. Amer., 98, 280-287, DOI: 10.1785/0120070057.

Aasha Pancha, John G. Anderson, and John N. Louie, 2007, Characterization of near-surface geology at strong-motion stations in the vicinity of Reno, Nevada: Bull. Seismol. Soc. Amer., 97, 2096-2117.

Donghong Pei, John N. Louie, and Satish K. Pullammanappallil, 2007, Application of simulated annealing inversion on high-frequency fundamental-mode Rayleigh wave dispersion curves: Geophysics, 72, no. 5 (Sept.-Oct.), pp. R77-R85.

Weston A. Thelen, Matthew Clark, Christopher T. Lopez, Chris Loughner, Hyunmee Park, James B. Scott, Shane B. Smith, Bob Greschke, and John N. Louie, 2006, A transect of 200 shallow shear velocity profiles across the Los Angeles Basin: Bull. Seismol. Soc. Amer., 96, no. 3 (June), pp. 1055-1067, doi: 10.1785/0120040093.

James B. Scott, Tiana Rasmussen, Barbara Luke, Wanda Taylor, J. L. Wagoner, Shane B. Smith, and John N. Louie, 2006, Shallow shear velocity and seismic microzonation of the urban Las Vegas, Nevada basin: Bull. Seismol. Soc. Amer., 96, no. 3 (June), pp. 1068-1077, doi: 10.1785/0120050044.

W. J. Stephenson, J. N. Louie, S. Pullammanappallil, R. A. Williams, and J. K. Odum, 2005, Blind shear-wave velocity comparison of ReMi and MASW results with boreholes to 200 m in Santa Clara Valley: Implications for earthquake ground motion assessment: Bull. Seismol. Soc. Amer., 95, no. 6 (Dec.), 2506-2516.

J. B. Scott, M. Clark, T. Rennie, A. Pancha, H. Park and J. N. Louie, 2004, A shallow shear-wave velocity transect across the Reno, Nevada area basin: Bull. Seismol. Soc. Amer., 94, no. 6 (Dec.), 2222-2228.

John N. Louie, Weston Thelen, Shane B. Smith, Jim B. Scott, Matthew Clark, and Satish Pullammanappallil, 2004, The northern Walker Lane refraction experiment: Pn arrivals and the northern Sierra Nevada root: Tectonophysics, 388, no. 1-4, 253-269.

John N. Louie, Sergio Chavez-Perez, Stuart Henrys, and Stephen Bannister, 2002, Multimode migration of scattered and converted waves for the structure of the Hikurangi slab interface, New Zealand: Tectonophysics, 355, no. 1-4, 227-246.

John N. Louie, 2001, Faster, better: shear-wave velocity to 100 meters depth from refraction microtremor arrays: Bull. Seismol. Soc. Amer., 91, no. 2 (April), 347-364.

R. E. Abbott, J. N. Louie, S. J. Caskey, and S. Pullammanappallil, 2001, Geophysical confirmation of low-angle normal slip on the historically active Dixie Valley fault, Nevada: Jour. Geophys. Res., 106, 4169-4181.

See full home page for links to preprints and copyright information.

Contacts:

Home Page: http://crack.seismo.unr.edu/~louie
Phone: 784-4219
E-mail: click to email