Educational Resources

A five 5-minute video summary presented at the 2012 UNAVCO science workshop "Bad assumptions or bad luck: Tohoku's embarrassing lessons for earthquake hazard mapping". Click here to watch

Lecture from the 2012 conference on mathematics in the geosciences: "Playing against nature: formulating cost-effective natural hazard policy given uncertainty" (Stein, S. and J. Stein). Click here for powerpoint

2011 Geoprisms meeting presentation: 2011 Mineral, Virginia earthquake illustrates the seismicity of a passive-aggressive continental margin

2011 ESF conference on Extreme Geohazards keynote lecture: Bad assumptions or bad luck: why natural hazard forecasts often fail and what to do about it (video and powerpoint)

2011 GSA meeting session for 40th anniversary of the Geophysics Division lecture: Bad maps or bad luck: Tohoku's embarassing lessons for earthquake hazard mapping, discussing why earthquake hazard maps often fail and what to do about it

2011 GSA meeting lecture: Learning from failure: new insights into continental rifting from North America's failed Mid-Continent Rift

2011 lecture: Uncertainties in earthquake hazard estimates: Ire from the 2012 conference on mathematics in the geosciences: "Playing against nature: formulating cost-effective natural hazard policy given uncertainty" (Stein, S. and J. Stein). Click here for powerpoint

2010 Stephan Mueller medal lecture at European Geosciences Union: "Migrating earthquakes and faults switching on and off: A complex system view of midcontinent earthquakes"

2009 George Woollard award lecture at GSA: "New view of New Madrid: little motion, complex faults, small hazard"

2010 S. T. Crough memorial lecture at Purdue University: "Disaster Deferred: How new science is changing our view of earthquakes in the midwest"

2010 Academy of Europe lecture: "Why seismologists can't predict earthquakes" p> 2006 IRIS/SSA lecture: "Giant earthquakes: why, where, when, and what we can do"

Lectures for IRIS summer intern orientation on earthquakes, earth structure, earthquake prediction and hazards, and the Haiti & Sichuan earthquakes

Lecture series: "Studying neotectonics with plate motion, seismological & GPS data"

"Using space geodetic data to teach about tectonics, earthquakes, and hazards"

Lecture series for China Earthquake Authority: "Using earthquake science to predict earthquake hazards and reduce earthquake risks: using what we know and recognizing what we don't"

"Teaching introductory geophysics: what our students don't know, need to, and what we can do"

"The student pipeline, future of seismology,

"The December 26, 2004 Sumatra earthquake and Indian Ocean tsunami"

Other material

GSA Today Article: Formation of Northwestern's Environmental Science Major, 1996

Earth Magazine Article: Understanding Earthquake Hazard Maps (pdf), 2009

EOS Article & WWW info: Upgrading a beginning geophysics course, 1997

EOS Article & WWW info: Preconceptions about earth science among students in an introductory course, 1998

Computers and Geoscience Article & WWW info: Technology in introductory geophysics: the high-low mix, 2000

Documention about Scilab

Introduction to earthquake probabilities

Boobytrap - a model for midcontinental earthquakes

A simple, cheap, and easy slider block model

Other demonstrations and labs