EES Prof Bill Barnhart receives NASA funding to explore earthquakes in the Middle East

Friday, August 5, 2016

Bill Barnhart
Bill Barnhart

University of Iowa Professor Bill Barnhart has received two three-year funding awards from NASA, including a NASA early career award. The awarded proposals seek to investigate earthquake hazards and the nature of active plate tectonics in the Middle East using a combination of classic seismology and satellite-based radar and optical imagery.

In an award through NASA's Earth Surface and Interior research program, Barnhart will work with researchers from the US Geological Survey and Washington and Lee University to characterize short- and long-term fault behavior in southern Pakistan, host of a destructive magnitude 7.7 earthquake in 2013. Through NASA's New (Early Career) Investigators Program in Earth Science, Barnhart and his research group will explore earthquakes throughout Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries in the Middle East in an effort to better characterize seismic hazard in a region that commonly experiences highly destructive earthquakes. This work will be conducted in collaboration with the USGS National Earthquake Information Center. Two new graduate students arriving in Fall 2016 will be funded to conduct research on these proposals.

Barnhart is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, part of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.