Overview

Matt Pritchard arrived at Cornell in 2005 after receiving his Ph.D. at Caltech in Geophysics (minor in planetary science) in 2003 and spending one year as a Hess postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. He has a B.A in physics from the University of Chicago. Pritchard is a geophysicist who measures changes in the shape of the Earth and develops models of the myriad processes that cause these changes, including: earthquakes, volcanoes, groundwater, landslides, and glaciers. His work provides new insight into the fundamental geological phenomena, and through research and teaching, he strives to answer some of today`s pressing societal questions about natural hazards and the degree to which humans are influencing glaciers and groundwater resources.

Research Focus

Research interests include solid-body geophysics, in particular earthquakes, volcanism, and subduction zones, as well as magmatism, faulting, and thermal evolution of other terrestrial planets. His primary tools are geodetic (InSAR and GPS) along with other observational and computational tools. A major focus for the coming years will be relating decadal measurements of deformation to longer-term deformation.

Instruction Focus

Planetary Formation and Evolution, Global Geophysics, Active Tectonics, Earthquake! (and other natural disasters), Graduate seminars on remote sensing, groundwater, glaciers, and lunar geology.

Additional Links

• Current and Planned Research Projects for Matt Pritchard
• Matt Pritchard`s Home Page

Honors, Awards and Appointments

• James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Engineering, Cornell - 2007

Professional Activities

• First annual meeting, University at Buffalo Center for Geohazards - 2008
• Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY - 2008
• European Geosciences Union Alexander von Humboldt Conference, Santiago, Chile - 2008
• Mini-course, Earthscope National Meeting, Monterey, CA, March 2007. - 2007
• IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, Western Chapter, Ithaca, NY - 2007
• Northeast Regional NASA Space Grant Meeting, Ithaca, NY - 2007
• "The Unknown Andes" Third annual INSTOC workshop, Ithaca, NY - 2007
• American Geophysical Union Joint Assembly, Acapulco, Mexico - 2007
• Keynote Address: 20th Colloquium on Latin American Earth Sciences, Kiel, Germany - 2007

Selected Publications

• Teleseismic, geodetic, and strong motion constraints on slip from recent southern Peru subduction zone earthquakes, M.E. Pritchard, E. Norabuena, C. Ji, R. Boroschek, D. Comte, M. Simons, T. Dixon, and P.A. Rosen, J. Geophys. Res., 112, 10.1029/2006JB004294.
• Do flexural strsses explain the mantle fault zone beneath Kilauea volcano? M.E. Pritchard, A.M. Rubin, and C.J. Wolfe, Geophys. J. Int., 168, 419-430.
• Natural Hazards: Keeping them from becoming natural disasters in Latin America, M.E. Pritchard, ReVista: The Harvard Review of Latin America, Winter, 2007. (invited submission)
• The constitution and structure of the lunar interior, M.A. Wieczorek, B.L. Jolliff, A. Khan, M.E. Pritchard, B.P. Weiss, J.G. Williams, L.L. Hood, K. Righter, C.R. Neal, C.K. Shearer, I.S. McCallum, S. Thompkins, J.J. Gillis, and B. Bussey, in New Views of the Moon, eds. B.L. Joliff, M.A. Wieczorek, C.K. Shearer, and C.R. Neal, Reviews in Mineralogy & Geochemistry, Vol. 60, 221-364.
• Distribution of slip from 11 Mw>6 earthquakes in the northern Chile subduction zone, M.E. Pritchard, C. Ji, and m. Simons, J. Geophys., Res., 111, 10.1029/2005JB004013.
• An aseismic fault slip pulse in northern Chile and along-strike variations in seismogenic behavior, M.E. Pritchard, and M. Simons, J. Geophys. Res., 111, 10.1029/2006JB004258.
• InSAR, a tool for measuring Earth`s surface deformation, M.E. Pritchard, Physics Today, 75, 68-69, July, 2006. (Invited tutorial article)
• Thermal and magmatic evolution of the Moon, C.K. Shearer, P.C. Hess, M.A. Wieczorek, M.E. Pritchard, E.M. Parmentier, L.E. Borg, J. Longhi, L.T. Elkins-Tanton, C.R. Neal, I. Antonenko, R.M. Canup, A.N. Halliday, T.L. Grove, B.H. Hager, D.C. Less, and U. Wiechert, in New Views of the Moon, eds. B.L. Joliff, M.A. Wieczorek, C.K. Shearer, and C.R. Neal, Reviews in Mineralogy & Geochemistry, Vol. 60, 365-518.
• Using InSAR to study earthquakes in South America, M.E. Pritchard and M. Simons, Alaska Satellite Facility News and Notes, 1:5, 2004. (invited submission)
• An InSAR-based survey of volcanic deformation in the central Andes, M.E. Pritchard and M. Simons, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 5, 0.1029/2003GC000610, 2004.
• An InSAR-based survey of volcanic deformation in the southern Andes, M.E. Pritchard and M. Simons, Geophys. Res. Lett., 10.1029/2004GL020545.
• Surveying volcanic arcs with satellite radar interferometry: The central Andes, Kamchatka, and beyond M.E. Pritchard and M. Simons, GSA Today, 14, 4-10, 2004.
• A satellite geodetic survey of large-scale deformation of volcanic centres in the central Andes, M.E. Pritchard and M. Simons, Nature, 418, 167-171, 2002.
• Thermal aspects of a lunar origin by giant impact, M.E. Pritchard and D.J. Stevenson, in Origin of the Earth and Moon, eds. R. Canup and K. Righter, University of Arizona Press, 179-196, 2000.

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