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Earth and Space Sciences Faculty

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Brian Atwater
Affiliate Professor

Office: Johnson Hall 370    (Mailing Address)
Phone: 206-553-2927
Fax: 206-553-8350 (shared)
E-Mail: atwater*
* to send email, replace * with @ess.washington.edu

Areas of Interest:
Quaternary Geology and Earthquake Hazards

Research Group:
Quaternary Research

Other UW Academic Affiliations:
Geologist, U.S.G.S.

Education:
Ph.D., University of Delaware, 1980

Background:
As a U.S. Geological Survey geologist, Brian Atwater studies Holocene earthquakes and tsunamis, and hazards they pose. He received his B.S. and M.S. in geology from Stanford University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from University of Delaware in 1980. He has studied Holocene sea levels at San Francisco Bay, Quaternary alluviation in the San Joaquin Valley, Eocene core complexes and Pleistocene floods in northeast Washington, and geologic records of earthquakes in Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Chile, and Japan.

Geologist, U. S. Geological Survey; Affiliate Professor, Quaternary Research Center; Seattle; Associate Editor, Quaternary Research (1994-2001); Guest Researcher, University of Tokyo and Geological Survey of Japan

Selected Publications:
Seventeenth-century uplift in eastern Hokkaido, Japan. The Holocene, 14, 487-501. 2004 (with R. Furukawa, E. Hemphill-Haley, Y. Ikeda, K. Kashima, K. Kawase, H.M. Kelsey, A.L. Moore, F. Nanayama, Y. Nishimura, S. Odagiri, Y. Ota, S.-C. Park, K. Satake, Y. Sawai, and K. Shimokawa).

Evidence for liquefaction identified in peeled slices of Holocene deposits along the lower Columbia River, Washington. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 94, 550-575. 2004 (by K. Takada and B.F. Atwater).

Earthquake recurrence inferred from paleoseismology, in Gillespie, A.R., Porter, S.C., and Atwater, B.F., The Quaternary Period in the United States. Amsterdam, Elsevier, 331-350. 2004 (with M.P. Tuttle, E.S. Schweig, C.M. Rubin, D.K. Yamaguchi, and E. Hemphill-Haley).

Fault slip and seismic moment of the 1700 Cascadia earthquake inferred from Japanese tsunami descriptions. Journal of Geophysical Research, 108, 2325, doi:10.1019/2003JB002521. 2003 (by K. Satake, K. Wang, and B.F. Atwater).

Pleistocene glacial-lake deposits of the Sanpoil River valley, northeastern Washington. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1661. 39 pp. 1986.

Graduate Students:
Carrie Garrison-Laney: Ph.D., Puget Sound paleoseismology
Bretwood Higman: Ph.D., Sedimentology
Paul Zehfuss: Ph.D., Lowland deposits derived from Mount Rainier lahars


Last Modified:2/10/2003


Earth and Space Sciences

(Geology, Geophysics, Geological Sciences)
University of Washington
Johnson Hall 070 •  Box 351310
4000 15th Avenue NE • Seattle, WA  98195-1310
Phone 206-543-1190  •  Fax 206-543-0489 
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