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Environmental Science
Coastal geologist joins SFU’s School of Environmental Science, brings expertise in coastal hazards, including Cascadia earthquakes and tsunamis
Jessica Pilarczyk is a coastal geologist investigating how earthquakes, tropical cyclones 鈥攚hich include hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones 鈥� and tsunamis impact coastlines. This May, she joins the Faculty of Environment as a Canada Research Chair in Coastal Hazards and an associate professor in SFU鈥檚 School of Environmental Science.
Pilarczyk explains that understanding how coastal areas have been impacted by long- and short-term hazards is necessary to build an accurate record of past storms and hazards 鈥� something that does not currently exist in many locations 鈥� so we can better prepare for and understand how future hazards may take form.
鈥淲e hear about these things on the news all the time, but on any given coastline, landfalling storms and tsunamis are fairly infrequent. Because the observational record is limited to a few decades to centuries at the most, long-term geologic records are imperative for assessing the hazard to coastal communities,鈥� says Pilarczyk.
This limited viewpoint means that there is a lot we don鈥檛 know about the frequency and variability of earthquakes, storms, and tsunamis, or what drives them.
Pilarczyk and her team specialize in developing innovative methods for extracting information from sediment samples, allowing them to look deep into Earth鈥檚 geological record to understand when events have occurred in the past and estimate the recurrence, magnitude, and intensity of the processes that caused them.
鈥淲e're able to examine at a sand layer, ascribe it to a tsunami, date it, and then we can run inverse models and reconstruct what those waves were like,鈥� explains Pilarczyk. 鈥淭hat's the sort of information that we need on long-term time scales to understand how often they typically happen, and more importantly, what the variability in timing and magnitude is.鈥�
Alongside her team, she is currently largely focused on the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) that spans the coast of Vancouver Island to California.
鈥淭his area is known to generate really large earthquakes but hasn't done so in the last 320-some-odd years 鈥� this is a big motivation. We're working on understanding the plate boundary and the recurrence interval, and then subsequently, what kind of tsunamis we can expect,鈥� says Pilarczyk.
This work is crucial to understanding earthquake and tsunami risks throughout B.C.鈥檚 West Coast.
鈥淭he vast majority of information we have on the CSZ is from south of the border and you cannot model subduction zones without considering the whole thing, and that whole northern part sitting offshore of B.C. is the big question mark.鈥�
Her team is working on the ground to help ensure that these models are accurate and that Canada has a plan in place to deal with both megathrust earthquakes and the tsunamis they cause. They also travel to coastal sites across the world to study what is happening at other subduction zones and apply this to Cascadia.
鈥淲e don't have a federal coordinated effort to deal with tsunamis. Efforts are mostly limited to individual communities or municipalities,鈥� says Pilarczyk. 鈥淭he research that we're uncovering, and the work that my students are doing is to help understand the risk so that the federal government can come up with a coordinated plan.鈥�
Her team also looks at the role that climate change will play in how tropical cyclones will impact coastlines.
鈥淐limate change is making coastlines way more vulnerable to even the subtlest environmental change. As sea levels rise, coastal environments and that natural barrier they provide to communities is being lost," says Pilarczyk. "This means that storms and tsunamis are reaching further inland than they did even a decade ago, and are resulting in more catastrophic effects.鈥�
Pilarczyk is excited to join Environmental Science to add to the breadth of knowledge in the unit and expand coastal science offerings to students.
鈥淓nvironmental science is one of the few units at SFU that addresses coastal issues. I think it鈥檚 so important, because we live on a coast. We need to train our students to have the broadest understanding of the environment as possible, from the mountains to the coast,鈥� says Pilarczyk. 鈥淚鈥檓 hoping to expand on this and show students what the main coastal problems are in B.C., and what they can do as future environmental scientists.鈥�
As Pilarczyk鈥檚 lab takes up roots in Environmental Science, she鈥檚 keen to expand her team with students whose curiosities span from B.C.鈥檚 tsunami risks to helping communities around the world better understand and prepare for storms.
Get involved or learn more about Pilarczyk and her team in the Coastal hazards Research Lab here.