Dr. Lanbo Liu, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Connecticut, will present a guest lecture titled “Great New Madrid Earthquakes after 200 Years: Facing the Scientific and Engineering Challenges” 4-5 p.m. Monday, March 10, in Room 205 McNutt Hall. The lecture’s abstract is below:

“The debate on the fate of the earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone (NMSZ) and its implications has been continuous and reheated by the latest paper by Page and Hough in Science (Feb. 14, 2014 v.343). In the science part of this talk I will make an inventory of all possible causes of what have made NMSZ the hotbed of big earthquakes, and focuses on a quantitative count for the middle crust rift pillow and its tectonic and seismic implication in the future. In the engineering part of my talk I will focus on a study of characterization of strong ground motion site effect in metropolitan Beijing area using micro-tremor or ambient noises. The approach may lend some thoughts for urban planning in an earthquake country setting such as Rolla.”