John A. Hole

RESEARCH INTERESTS: EXPLORATION GEOPHYSICS OF THE CONTINENTAL CRUST

• the application of reflection and refraction seismic and radar imaging to the study of Earth's continental crust,
• the development and implementation of improved and practical data acquisition and analysis techniques, and
• integration of geoscience datasets for an improved understanding of Earth.

Working with real data stimulates my research interest in the development of improved field and analysis procedures, extending traditional methods to solve geologic problems in new ways. Methods of interest include 3-D wavefield imaging, tomography, waveform inversion, ambient-noise interferometry, prestack depth migration, migration of earthquake sources, guided waves. Other exploration geophysics methods are of interest as they apply to specific problems.

I'm also interested in improving methods of integrating geophysical, geological, and geochemical data and models toward a better understanding of Earth's subsurface and Earth processes.

Current/recent projects include:

• Field Projects and Subsequent Data Analysis and Interpretation
  • ground-penetrating radar imaging of fractures and voids in a subsurface mine
  • electromagnetic induction imaging of an archeological site
  • seismic imaging of western Idaho - eastern Oregon (IDOR), investigating deformation and magmatic modification of a steep continental margin
  • Aftershock Imaging with Dense Arrays (AIDA) - Virginia, investigating the aftershock zone of the 2011 magnitude 5.8 earthquake in central Virginia
  • Salton Seismic Imaging Project (SSIP), southern California, investigating continental rift processes in the Salton Trough and earthquake hazards on associated transform faults
• Technical Studies Using Synthetic and Real Data
  • quantitative comparison of wavefield and waveform data from diverse sensors
  • waveform inversion of wide-angle refraction and reflection data
  • interferometry imaging using ambient noise recorded on dense arrays
  • migration and backprojection imaging of earthquakes for rupture processes
  • imaging the internal properties of major active fault zones using seismic guided waves
  • resolution of travel time and waveform inversion
  • ground-penetrating radar imaging of fracture aperture and fill
  • quantitative integration of diverse datasets through petrophysics

PUBLICATIONS

CURRICULUM VITAE

SOFTWARE

CCSS Deep Seismic Methods International Workshop, 2003

TEACHING

Courses Taught

RESEARCH FACILITIES

The geophysics group maintains a network of Linux and Mac OSX workstations, and tens of Terabytes of disk space. We have one Unix/Linux system administrator.

The Virginia Tech Advanced Research Computing facility operates several high-performance computer clusters that are used for geophysics and other research.

Major commercial software licenses include Halliburton-Landmark's suite for 3D seismic processsing (SeisSpace Promax) and seismic & stratigraphic interpretation (DecisionSpace), and ESRI's Geographical Information System (GIS). Seismic software developed in-house involves 3-D modeling and inversion of times and waveforms.

Exploration geophysics field equipment includes:

• Geometrics Strataview 60-channel, 24-bit seismic recording system, geophones and cables
• Sensors and Software Pulse-Echo 100 (12.5 - 200 MHz) and Noggin (250 - 1000 MHz) ground-penetrating radar
• AGI SuperSting 8-channel, 64-electrode electrical resistivity
• Geonics EM-34 ground conductivity meter
• Geophex GEM-2 electromagnetic induction
• Scintrex ENVI VLF electromagnetics with MT resistivity
• Trimble GPS surveying equipment (cm accuracy)

Department of Geosciences
Virginia Tech
4044 Derring Hall (MC 0420)
Blacksburg, VA 24061
phone: 1-540-231-3858
fax: 1-540-231-3386
office: 1040 Derring Hall
e-mail: hole@vt.edu

last updated April 2018

To My Home Page
To Geosciences Home Page