“Tonga is such an extreme place, and that makes it very revealing,” said S. Shawn Wei, a seismologist who earned his doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis and now is a postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. Dr. Wei is also a McDonnell International Scholars Academy Alum.
Tonga is a seismologists’ paradise, and not just because of the white-sand beaches. The subduction zone off the east coast of the archipelago racks up more intermediate-depth and deep earthquakes than any other subduction zone, where one plate of Earth’s lithosphere dives under another, on the planet. That swarm of earthquakes is catnip for seismologists because they still don’t understand what causes earthquakes to pop off at such great depths.
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