Nienke Blom

SM Seismology

The 2017 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Nienke Blom for the poster/PICO entitled:

Imaging density in the Earth and the construction of optimal observables (Blom, N.; Boehm, C.; Fichtner, A.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Nienke Blom is a PhD student at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) working on seismic imaging techniques. Using waveform inversion, she works on developing methods to image density directly and independently. This is interesting because density contrasts determine the forcing of mantle convection and plate tectonics. Additionally, independently imaging density along with seismic velocities can help to differentiate between thermal and compositional heterogeneity within the Earth. After showing that density can in principle be recovered in synthetic examples, Nienke now works on applying her methods to the Eastern Mediterranean region.
The poster presented at EGU 2017 explores one of the ways in which we can explore the seismic signal to maximise sensitivity to density. This is done by comparing different parts of the seismic signal and finding the linear combination of measurements that maximises sensitivity to density while minimising sensitivity to the other parameters.
Collaborating with Andreas Fichtner and others at ETH Zürich, she travels to Zurich a lot. In 2018, she will start as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge.