{"690430":{"#nid":"690430","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Shake It Up: At Work With Zhigang Peng","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/eas.gatech.edu\/people\/peng-zhigang\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EZhigang Peng\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E studies the physics of faulting, earthquake triggering, fault zone structures, earthquakes swarms, slow earthquakes, but lately he\u2019s added a few other topics that veer away from the usual. Vibrations in a sewer pipe. Exploding rock outcrops.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIn particular, what I have been working on the past 20 years is primarily understanding how earthquakes interact with each other, and in some cases, how other processes interact with earthquakes,\u201d explains the professor in the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/eas.gatech.edu\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESchool of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E, who also serves as associate chair for Research and Faculty Development for the School and is incoming president of the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.seismosoc.org\/\u0022\u003ESeismological Society of America\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPeng\u0027s recent work deploying nodal seismometers in and around Georgia has led him \u201calmost by accident\u201d into the field of environmental seismology.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe rise of nodal seismometers, fiber Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and machine learning have combined to produce a wealth of seismic data, and \u201cpretty quickly you realize that there are actually quite a lot of non-earthquake events that are also there in the data,\u201d he says.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIf you really wanted to study earthquake events, you better learn to distinguish or throw out those non-earthquake events first. But it turns out that some of those events are also equally interesting or sometimes more interesting, depending on where you are studying,\u201d Peng adds.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEnvironmental seismologists are turning noise into signal to study a variety of phenomena, from urban traffic to groundwater levels. Peng and his colleagues used seismic sensors to \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rO6r1Dr5H1I\u0022\u003Eanalyze periodic vibrations from shaking homes\u003C\/a\u003E nearly every six minutes in a neighborhood outside of Atlanta, for instance, discovering that a faulty check valve in a sewer pipe was producing a water hammer effect.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd then there are the exploding rocks. In July 2023, there was a \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=v7XxZVN7JVM\u0022\u003Eviolent spalling of rock\u003C\/a\u003E off the face of \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/arabiaalliance.org\/field-notes\/did-an-earthquake-strike-arabia-mountain\/\u0022\u003EArabia Mountain in Georgia\u003C\/a\u003E that scattered large chunks of gneiss. \u201cNormally on these outcrops the outer layer of bare rock can peel off slowly, but in some cases they kind of blast off violently and generate some ground shaking,\u201d Peng says.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.seismosoc.org\/news\/at-work-zhigang-peng\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cem\u003ERead more in the Seismological Society of America newsroom.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeophysics Professor and incoming Seismological Society of America President Zhigang Peng shares what\u0027s new in research and recent work \u2014 from earthquakes and sewer pipes to exploding rock outcrops.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Geophysics Professor and incoming Seismological Society of America President Zhigang Peng shares what\u0027s new in research and recent work \u2014 from earthquakes and sewer pipes to exploding rock outcrops."}],"uid":"34528","created_gmt":"2026-05-21 18:59:09","changed_gmt":"2026-05-21 19:04:11","author":"jhunt7","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2026-05-21T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2026-05-21T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"680328":{"id":"680328","type":"image","title":"Fresh fault outcrop (Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area)","body":"\u003Cp\u003EJuly 2023: A long line of scattered rocks indicate a fresh fault in the outcrop within the Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve. (Photo: Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area)\u003C\/p\u003E","created":"1779390019","gmt_created":"2026-05-21 19:00:19","changed":"1779390019","gmt_changed":"2026-05-21 19:00:19","alt":"July 2023: A long line of scattered rocks indicate a fresh fault in the outcrop within the Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve. (Photo: Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area)","file":{"fid":"264575","name":"IMG_1771.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/05\/21\/IMG_1771.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/05\/21\/IMG_1771.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":154740,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2026\/05\/21\/IMG_1771.jpg?itok=9QwG0Qhj"}}},"media_ids":["680328"],"groups":[{"id":"1278","name":"College of Sciences"},{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"364801","name":"School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS)"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}