Mary Lou Zoback ( Chetlain; born July 5, 1952) is an American

geophysicist Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and properties of Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. Geophysicists conduct investigations acros ...

and

seismologist Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes (or generally, quakes) and the generation and propagation of elastic ...

. A specialist in tectonic stress and natural hazards risks, she spent most of her career as a research scientist with the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

. Zoback chaired the World Stress Map project of the International Lithosphere Program from 1986 to 1992. Zoback served on the U.S.

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board was established in the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act (NWPAA) (P.L. 100–203) to "...evaluate the technical and scientific validity of activities elated to managing and disposing of spent nuc ...

from 2012 to 2018.

Early life and education

Mary Lou Chetlain was born on July 5, 1952, in

Sanford, Florida Sanford is a city and the county seat of Seminole County, Florida, United States. It is located in Central Florida and its population was 61,051 as of the 2020 census. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford Metropolitan Statistical ...

. Her father Kent Chetlain was a sports editor with the ''

Bradenton Herald ''The Bradenton Herald'' is a newspaper based in Bradenton, Florida, in the United States. History On September 15, 1922, Volume 1, Number 1 was published as ''The Evening Herald''. It was a merger of two weekly papers: the ''Manatee River Jou ...

'' and as a teenager, she operated the

McKechnie Field LECOM Park is a baseball field located in Bradenton, Florida. It is the spring training home of the Pittsburgh Pirates and is named after a 15-year naming rights deal was signed with the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, which has its ...

electronic scoreboard during

Pittsburgh Pirates The Pittsburgh Pirates are an American professional baseball team based in Pittsburgh. The Pirates compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (baseball), National League (NL) National League Central, Central ...

spring training games. She began her undergraduate studies in

oceanography Oceanography (), also known as oceanology, sea science, ocean science, and marine science, is the scientific study of the ocean, including its physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of to ...

at the

Florida Institute of Technology Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech or FIT) is a private research university in Melbourne, Florida. The university comprises four academic colleges: Engineering & Science, Aeronautics, Psychology & Liberal Arts, and Business. Approxim ...

. After taking a course on

plate tectonics Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...

and elasticity, she met geophysicist

Allan V. Cox Allan Verne Cox (December 17, 1926 – January 27, 1987) was an American geophysicist. His work on dating geomagnetic reversals, with Richard Doell and Brent Dalrymple, made a major contribution to the theory of plate tectonics. Allan Cox won ...

at a meeting on solar magnetism in

Cape Canaveral Cape Canaveral () is a cape (geography), cape in Brevard County, Florida, in the United States, near the center of the state's Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast. Officially Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973, it lies east of Merritt Island, separated ...

. Following his recommendation, she transferred to

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in her junior year, receiving a full scholarship. At Stanford she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1974, a Master of Science degree in 1975, and a Ph.D. in 1978, all in geophysics. Her doctoral thesis was titled "Mid-miocene rifting in north-central Nevada: A detailed study of late cenozoic deformation in the northern basin and range". Her advisor was George Thompson.

Career

Following her graduation, Zoback conducted postdoctoral research from 1978 to 1979 with the

(USGS) through a National Research Council fellowship. She worked with the Heat Flow Studies group, conducting research on tectonic deformation in northern Nevada. In 1979, she joined the USGS as a research geophysicist in the office of the Western Earthquake Hazards Team. Zoback created a map of tectonic stress fields for the Western U.S. states, later extending the map with colleagues to include the contiguous United States. According to Zoback, the work demonstrated "that broad regions of the Earth’s crust in the U.S. were subjected to a uniformly oriented stress field and resulted from large-scale tectonic processes". Zoback was approached by the president of the International Lithosphere Program with the idea of creating a global map for stress fields. From 1986 to 1992, Zoback chaired the International Lithosphere Program's World Stress Map project, an open-access public database. The project had the objective of inferring the relative magnitudes of forces that act on the

lithosphere A lithosphere () is the rigid, outermost rocky shell of a terrestrial planet or natural satellite. On Earth, it is composed of the crust and the lithospheric mantle, the topmost portion of the upper mantle that behaves elastically on time ...

. Zoback coordinated the compilation and interpretation of geophysical and geologic data on tectonic stress fields with dozens of scientists from over 30 countries. The project led to a special issue of the ''

Journal of Geophysical Research The ''Journal of Geophysical Research'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal. It is the flagship journal of the American Geophysical Union. It contains original research on the physical, chemical, and biological processes that contribute to the u ...

'' in 1992 for which Zoback was guest editor. Zoback was a member of the National Research Council's United States Geodynamics Committee from 1985 to 1989. and the

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party * National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political g ...

review panel for the continental dynamics program. She is a past member of the council and executive board of the

Geological Society of America The Geological Society of America (GSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences. History The society was founded in Ithaca, New York, in 1888 by Alexander Winchell, John J. Stevenson, Charles H. Hi ...

(GSA) and she served as president of the GSA's Tectonophysics Section in 2000. In 1990 Zoback received a Gilbert Fellowship Award from the USGS for a yearlong sabbatical in

Karlsruhe, Germany Karlsruhe ( ; ; ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, after its capital Stuttgart a ...

. Zoback was the chief scientist of the USGS Earthquake Hazards team beginning in 1999. She oversaw the study "Earthquake Probabilities in the San Francisco Bay Region, 2002-2031". She was a USGS Senior Research Scientist from 2002 to 2006 and developed an integrated hazards research program for Northern California. From 2006 to 2011, Zoback served as vice president for Earthquake Risk Applications with Risk Management Solutions, a Bay Area catastrophe modeling firm. She developed risk models to examine the role that

earthquake insurance Earthquake insurance is a form of property insurance that pays the policyholder in the event of an earthquake that causes damage to the property. Most ordinary homeowners insurance policies do not cover earthquake damage. Most earthquake insuran ...

has in society and to quantify the effects of risk reduction and disaster management. At Stanford University, she was a consulting professor in the Geophysics Department starting in 2011. Zoback was appointed to the U.S.

by President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

on September 25, 2012. The board provides scientific and technical oversight of the Department of Energy's program for managing and disposing of high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel.

Research

Zoback's principal area of research is active

tectonics Tectonics ( via Latin ) are the processes that result in the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. The field of ''planetary tectonics'' extends the concept to other planets and moons. These processes ...

, with an emphasis on the relationship between tectonic stress fields and the incidence of earthquakes. Her studies have focused on the

San Andreas Fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental Fault (geology)#Strike-slip faults, right-lateral strike-slip transform fault that extends roughly through the U.S. state of California. It forms part of the tectonics, tectonic boundary between the Paci ...

system, the

Basin and Range Province The Basin and Range Province is a vast United States physiographic region, physiographic region covering much of the inland Western United States and Northern Mexico, northwestern Mexico. It is defined by unique basin and range topography, charac ...

, and intraplate regions. Her work has involved quantifying

natural hazard A natural disaster is the very harmful impact on a society or community brought by natural phenomenon or hazard. Some examples of natural hazards include avalanches, droughts, earthquakes, floods, heat waves, landslides - including submarin ...

risks as well as developing strategies for risk reduction and metrics for disaster resilience. Zoback dedicated a large part of her studies to the

system from 1986 to 1992. She worked on the connection between earthquakes and large strike-slip faults. Through a reanalysis of the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 AM Pacific Time Zone, Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated Moment magnitude scale, moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli inte ...

, Zoback studied the concept of the

earthquake cycle The earthquake cycle refers to the phenomenon that earthquakes repeatedly occur on the same fault as the result of continual stress accumulation and periodic stress release. Earthquake cycles can occur on a variety of faults including subduction ...

Personal life

Zoback married geophysicist Mark David Zoback in 1973. They have two children.

Awards and honors

* 1987 –

James B. Macelwane Medal The James B. Macelwane Medal is awarded annually by the American Geophysical Union to three to five early career scientists (no more than 10 years beyond having received their Ph.D.). It is named after James B. Macelwane, a Jesuit priest and one of ...

of the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, Atmospheric science, atmospheric, Oceanography, ocean, Hydrology, hydrologic, Astronomy, space, and Planetary science, planetary scientists and enthusiasts that ...

* 1995 – Elected to the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

* 2002 – Meritorious Service Award of the

Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources. It also administers programs relatin ...

* 2003 – Bownocker Medal of

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

* 2006 – "Leadership, Innovation, and Outstanding Accomplishments in Earthquake Risk Reduction" Award from the

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) is a leading technical society in dissemination of earthquake risk and earthquake engineering research both in the U.S. and globally. EERI members include researchers, geologists, geotechnical ...

* 2007 – Arthur L. Day Medal of the

* 2007 – Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America * 2022 – Distinguished Alumni Award, Stanford University

Selected publications

* ''State of stress in the conterminous United States.'' Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 85, no. B11, p. 6113–6156. (1980) * Zoback, M. L., Anderson, R. E., and Thompson, G. A., ''Cenozoic evolution of the state of stress and style of Tectonism of the Basin and Range Province of the western United States: Phil. Trans. Roy.'' Soc. London A, v. 300, p. 407-434. (1981) * Zoback, M. D., and Zoback, M. L.'', State of stress and intra-plate earthquakes in the central and eastern United States'': Science, v. 213, p. 96-104. (1981) * ''New evidence on the state of stress on the San Andreas fault system'': Science, v. 238, p. 1105-1111. (1987) * Zoback, M. L., and Zoback, M. D., ''Regional tectonic stress field of the continental U.S.: Geophysical Framework of the Continental U.S.'', L. Pakiser and W. D. Mooney, eds., Geological Society of America Memoir, 172, p. 523-539. (1989) * ''Global patterns of tectonic stress.'' Nature, v. 341, p. 291–298. (1989) * Zoback, M. L., ''Stress field constraints on intraplate seismicity in Eastern North America:'' Journal Geophysical Research, v. 97, p. 11761-11782. (1992) *''First and second order patterns of stress in the lithosphere: the World Stress Map project.'' Journal Geophysical Research, v. 97, p. 11703-11728. (1992) * ''Abrupt along-strike change in tectonic style: San Andreas fault zone, San Francisco Peninsula.'' Journal of Geophysical Research: v. 104, p. 10719-10,742. (1999) * ''Committee on Development of an Addendum to the National Science Education Standards on Scientific Inquiry, Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards, National Academy Press'', 202 p. (2000) * ''Analysis of the tsunamis generated by the Mw7.8 1906 San Francisco earthquake''. Geology, v. 27, p. 15–18. (2000) * ''Grand challenges in earth and environmental sciences: science, stewardship, and service for the 21st century.'' GSA Today, v., p. 41- 46. (2001)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zoback, Mary Lou American seismologists American geophysicists American women geophysicists 1952 births Living people American women geologists United States Geological Survey personnel Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Geophysical Union Fellows of the Geological Society of America Florida Institute of Technology alumni Stanford University alumni 20th-century American geologists 21st-century American geologists 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women scientists Presidents of the Geological Society of America