Dear Colleagues,

Phew… I need to come up for air after a hectic week. I don’t know about all of you, but my group has hit high gear in preparation for AGU. I just had a student, José de la Peña, visit from Chile for a month to work on where and why foreshocks occur where they do. Our granular flow experiments are chugging out results and the computers are whirring (literally) on machine learning forecasts. Science is happening!

I’m looking forward to seeing what all of you are up to at the SZ4D events at AGU. There will be mini-workshops on DAS and Alaskan volcanoes on the Sunday before, and will be followed by an icebreaker fueled by a warm-up poster session (why not see a few cool results early?). The SZ4D townhall on Wednesday night at 6 PM will give us a chance to discuss the larger-scale initiatives for connecting scientists and building infrastructure. And, of course, we have our oral and poster sessions: The SZ4D Experiment: Comparing Subduction Zone Processes Across Three Margins (T43B and T51E).

AGU is big and beautiful, but it is tough to have the kind of focused, prolonged conversation that is really necessary to tie together the subduction zone puzzle. That is why we are planning an SZ4D science community meeting this April in Long Beach, CA, with ~150 participants for a more focused discussion. Take a look and apply now. Applications will close in early January.

Hope you are having as much fun as I am and I look forward to seeing you either in New Orleans or Long Beach (or both!) soon.

Emily