Dear Colleagues,

Welcome back to the new (Northern Hemisphere) academic year! SZ4D and our partners through SZNet had an incredibly productive year and we are looking forward to building on that momentum.

Highlights from last academic year included the back-to-back workshops in Santiago on earthquake mechanics and ocean floor technology, organized in partnership with the Japanese Slow-to-Fast group, followed by an Andes crest-to-coast international field trip. We secured NSF funding for the MultiHazard Array design and brought together a PI -team through an open call process. The IMPACTS group brought together co-curricular staff from SZ4D institutions to accelerate our workforce development efforts.

We also launched a matchmaking survey and assembled a platform of subduction zone geohazard scientists to help researchers find collaborators, advisors and advisees. The international webinars, virtual workshops, online science hub, and AGU events have further expanded opportunities for scientists to connect the pieces. Our partnership with GeoArray and Strabospot is developing the tools for team-level geological data collection. Finally, we signed Memoranda of Understanding with key partners like SERNAGEOMIN and the Chilean Seismic Network.

SZ4D is clearly happening!

This year’s priorities include submitting the MultiHazard Array proposal to NSF’s MSRI program, strengthening international collaborations, advancing Center-level coordinated science, and supporting the scientific community through a community meeting and other activities. Please mark your calendars for the SZ4D Science Community Meeting in Long Beach, California on April 20-22, 2026!

SZ4D leadership just met in Santa Cruz to chart out specific tasks for the year and a plan to achieve these goals. The most complicated part of that plan is coordinating Center-level science. Defining the limits and possibilities of geohazard prediction is a much bigger job than any of us can accomplish alone. Coordination is necessary to move the needle on predicting geohazards and bring our field into a comparable position to weather and ocean forecasting. As many of you are aware, SZ4D submitted a proposal to the NSF Geohazards Center call in March 2024. In early September, the program announced the funding of CLaSH, a landslide-focussed center. As of this writing, the multihazards SZ4D Center proposal is still pending.

Where does that leave us? SZ4D is not standing still. As is obvious from the accomplishments and plans above, we will continue to do science, share the results, build infrastructure and nurture the next generation of scientists who will use it. Our discussions have brought to light many critical knowledge gaps and we should continue to do the necessary science to fill those gaps. In the meantime, we are actively looking for other coordination mechanisms that could easily complement a Center and would still be useful on their own.

Thank you for your continued efforts. Looking forward to seeing everyone at AGU, online and in Long Beach in April!

Emily,