TECTONICS

The Tectonics Observatory (TO) is a multi-disciplinary center at the California Institute of Technology. We aim to understand the behavior and properties of the Earth's surface and underlying layers (the lithosphere), covering topics such as earthquakes and mountain building... Thanks to a generous grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Caltech has established the Tectonics Observatory with the ultimate goal of providing a new view of how and why the earth's crust and lithosphere are deforming over timescales ranging from a few tens of seconds (the typical duration of an earthquake), to tens of millions of years (the time it takes to build mountains).

Primary location: Pasadena United States