PIPages
Labs

Maureen Long

Yale University, CT·Earth & Environmental Science

Continents are built and reshaped over hundreds of millions of years by plate tectonics: plates collide to raise mountains, supercontinents split apart, and one plate dives beneath another. Most of the evidence of this history lies deep underground, out of reach.

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Fields

Earth & Environmental Science

Physics

Topics

seismology

seismic imaging

seismic anisotropy

Grants
4 known grants, through Jul 2028

What they work on

  1. Image the New England crust at high resolution using hundreds of nodal seismometers spaced 500 m apart, analyzing both distant earthquake waves and background seismic noise to reveal how supercontinent cycles and mountain-building shaped it.
  2. Test whether the lithosphere beneath New England keeps a record of ancient collisions or heals over time, using receiver functions, travel-time analysis and wavefield migration of data from the NEST seismometer array.
  3. Determine whether ongoing mantle processes are changing the lithosphere beneath the Northern Appalachian Anomaly, a zone of slow seismic waves, using SKS splitting measurements that detect direction-dependent rock structure.
  4. Pair seismic images with zircon U-Pb dating of ancient arc rocks and 40Ar/39Ar dating of old faults to learn the timing of mountain-building and fault reactivation in New England.
  5. Test whether the Nashoba terrane in eastern Massachusetts formed by channel flow, deep partly molten rock squeezed toward the surface, using a six-station broadband seismic array plus SEISConn data from Connecticut.
  6. Run high-pressure, high-temperature deformation experiments on olivine, the main mantle mineral, in a large torsion apparatus to measure how strain creates and changes crystal alignment, and use them to calibrate the D-Rex texture model.
  7. Build 3D subduction zone models with the updated D-Rex model and simulate shear wave splitting, then compare the results with seismic observations from Alaska, Cascadia and South America to narrow down patterns of mantle flow.

More about the research

These projects use seismology, the study of how earthquake waves travel through Earth, as a kind of CT scan of the crust and mantle. The seismic images are combined with surface geology, rock dating and lab experiments. Three projects focus on the ancient Appalachian mountain belt beneath New England. A fourth studies how the mantle flows at subduction zones, where one plate sinks beneath another.

Why it matters

Mountain belts and continental crust control where critical minerals, petroleum and water are found, so clearer images of New England's crust and its history could improve understanding of how these resources are distributed. Subduction zones produce the most hazardous earthquakes and volcanoes, including in Alaska, Cascadia and South America. Better models of mantle flow there could help clarify how these plate boundaries work.

Known grants

From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.

Investigating Earth’s crust beneath New England using dense seismic arrays

NSF · Aug 2026 – Jul 2028

Collaborative Research: CSEDI: Integrating Seismic Anisotropy, Mantle Flow, and Rock Deformation in Subduction Zone Settings

NSF · Aug 2022 – Jul 2027

Collaborative Research: Testing for Channel Flow and Ductile Extrusion In The Southeastern New England Appalachians Using An Integrated Geophysical and Geological Approach

NSF · Jul 2022 – Jun 2027

Closest labs

Lucy Flesch

Purdue University, IN·Earth & Environmental Science

Build a regionally consistent, multi-plate velocity field for the Arctic by combining GPS measurements with mid-ocean ridge spreading rates that record motion over hundreds of thousands of years.

Francis Sousa

Oregon State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science

Test whether the ancient Tyee river drained a large continental interior from western Idaho or began in the Klamath Mountains, using U-Pb and Lu-Hf analysis of zircon sand grains to trace sediment sources.

Zachary Eilon

University of California-Santa Barbara, CA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career

Test predicted signatures of dynamic upwelling beneath mid-ocean ridges using surface- and body-wave tomography from roughly 80 ocean-bottom seismometers deployed across the Pacific-Cocos and Cocos-Nazca spreading centers.

The school

Yale University: 73 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.

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