Education

• Postdoc. 2004-2006 Harry O. Wood Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
• Ph.D., Geophysics, 2004 California Insitute of Technology
• M.A., Geophysics, 2000 California Insitute of Technology
• B.A., Geophysics, 1998 University of California, Berkeley

Courses

• GEO 113 – Natural Disaster
• GEO 465 – Introduction to Geophysics
• GEO 581 – Topics in Tectonics
• GEO 370 – Earth Structure

Research Interests

My primary topic of research includes determining complex seismic velocity structures within the solid earth, primarily the crust and upper mantle. This is accomplished through seismic waveform modeling in 1, 2 and 3-D and the utilization of a number of programs which compute synthetic seismograms. Of particular interest are highly complex and unusual seismic signals resulting from exotic sources and/or complex seismic wave propagation. Computation of synthetics seismograms, especially in 3D, takes place in massively parallel computers housed within the department and at super computing centers around the world.

Research Activity

NSF MARGINS – Rupturing of the Continental Lithosphere (RCL) – Collaborative Research: 3-D tomography of the crust and upper mantle beneath the Gulf Extensional Province and Baja California; Collaboration with Don Forsyth at Brown University

Publications

1. Wang, Y., D. W. Forsyth, C. J. Rau, N. Carriero, B. Schmandt, J. B. Gaherty, and B. Savage (2013), Fossil slabs attached to unsubducted fragments of the farallon plate, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110, no. 14, 5342-5346.
2. Shen, Y., Y. Ren, H. Gao, and B. Savage (2012), An improved method to extract very-broadband empirical green’s functions from ambient seismic noise, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 102, no. 4, 1872-1877.
3. Savage, B. and Y. Wang (2012), Integrated Model of the Crustal structure in the Gulf of California Extensional Province, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am., 102, no. 2, 878-885.
4. Savage, B. (2012), Seismic constraints on the water flux delivered to the deep Earth by subduction, Geology, 40, no. 3, 235-238.
5. Covellone, B. M. and B. Savage (2012), A Quantitative Comparison Between 1D and 3D Source Inversion Methodologies: Application to the Middle East, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am., 102, no. 5, doi:10.1785/0120110278.
6. Savage, B., D. Komatitsch, and J. Tromp (2010), Effects of 3D Attenuation on Seismic Wave Amplitude and Phase Measurements, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am., 100, no. 3, 1241-1251.
7. Wang, Y., D. W. Forsyth, and B. Savage (2009), Convective upwelling in the mantle beneath the Gulf of California, Nature, 462, 499-501.
8. Savage, B. and P. G. Silver (2008), Evidence for a compositional boundary within the lithospheric mantle beneath the Kalahari craton from S receiver functions, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 272, 600-609.
9. Silver, Paul G., Mark D. Behn, Katherine Kelley, Mark Schmitz and Brian Savage. Understanding Cratonic Flood Basalts, Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 245(1):190-201. 15 May 2006.
10. Savage, B., and D. V. Helmberger, Complex Rayleigh waves resulting from deep sedimentary basins, Earth. Plane. Sci. Lett., Vol. 218, Issues 1-2, 30, January 229-239 2004.
11. Savage, B., and D. V. Helmberger, Site response from incident PnL waves, Bull. Seismo. Soc. Am., Vol. 94, No. 1, pp. 357-362, February 2004.
12. Savage, B., C. Ji, and D. V. Helmberger, Velocity variations in the uppermost mantle beneath the southern Sierra Nevada and Walker Lane, Jour. Geophys. Res., 108 (B7), ESE 2, 2003.
13. Lohman, R., M. Simons, and B. Savage, Location and mechanism of the little skull mountain earthquake as constrained by satellite radar interferometry and seismic waveform modeling, Jour. Geophys. Res., 107 (B6), ETG 7, 2002.
14. Savage, B., Y. Tan, and D. Helmberger, Regional location and identification using sparse stations, in 23nd Annual DoD/DOE Seismic Research Symposium, 2001.
15. Savage, B., and D. V. Helmberger, Kursk explosion, Bull. Seismo. Soc. Am., 91 , 753 759, 2001.
16. Helmberger, D., J. Chen, and B. Savage, Adaptive techniques for estimating and locating small events using regional waveform data, in 22nd Annual DoD/DoE Seismic Research Symposium, pp. 161 169, 2000.
17. Dreger, D., and B. Savage, Aftershocks of the 1952 Kern County, California earthquake sequence, Bull. Seismo. Soc. Am., 89, 1084 1108, 1999.