Earthquakes, geoscience, and the ways we share and use scientific knowledge.
Featured Writing
Earthquake Prediction?
Why earthquake prediction claims persist—and how scientists test ideas against evidence.
Breaking in to SciComm
Practical ways to build experience and find a path into science communication.
Flying the faults of Southern California
An aerial tour of Southern California’s faults and the landscapes they shape.
Articles & Essays
- Are earthquakes becoming more common? Here’s what the numbers say — The Conversation · 2026. Examining earthquake frequency and why recent events can feel like an increase.
- Do Science. Pump. Repeat. — Scientific American · 2019. Coauthored essay on supporting breastfeeding scientists.
- Infertility and the Leaky Pipeline — Scientific American · 2019. Coauthored essay on fertility challenges and retention in scientific careers.
- Mapping Rocks From Space — Frontiers for Young Minds · 2024. Geoscience for young readers, coauthored with Alka Tripathy-Lang.
- Lights, Camera, Action! — AGU, The Plainspoken Scientist · 2021. Coauthored guidance on making and sharing video for distance learning.
- A Series of Fortunate Events — The Xylom · 2019. A personal account of my path into geoscience.
- Scientists, Meet Twitter! — The Xylom · 2019. A collaborative piece on scientists and social media.
All Blog Posts
Browse the complete archive, with the most recent posts first.
Earthquake Magnitude Scales
Did you know that scientists no longer use the Richter Scale to measure earthquake magnitude? Now, we tend to use the “Moment magnitude” scale, which was built off of the tenants of…
What is an aftershock?
There is often confusion surrounding the terminology of earthquakes. The largest earthquake in an earthquake sequence is called a mainshocks. Mainshocks are followed by 100s or even 1000s of smaller earthquakes, called…
Are we having more earthquakes than usual?
Are there more earthquake than usual? Nope!
Earthquake Prediction?
Earthquake prediction is, predictably, a topic once again. It doesn’t really matter when you’re reading this because it’s almost always a topic, but it becomes especially problematic after large earthquakes. Why? Because…
Flying the faults of Southern California
I married in to a family of pilots. One of the perks of this is that once in while they’ll humor me and fly me around so that I can see Southern…
Valuing science communication
I’d like to briefly draw attention to part of our recently published Science Communication Training paper called “A Need for a Changing Value System”. Science communicators often fall victim to the “Sagan…
