Dan Frost

I am a geophysicist investigating the broad question of how Earth came to be in its present state, specifically through seismic observations and their integration with the results of other geoscience disciplines. I work at the University of South Carolina in the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment.

My work focusses on the use of high frequency seismic waves to understand the detailed structure of Earth’s interior, throughout the core and mantle. While the rough velocity structure of the mantle is generally agreed upon, the smaller-scale structure is more enigmatic. By knowing the Earth’s structure across length-scales we can begin to understand the past and on-going physical processes. I employ arrays of seismometers to amplify small signals relative to the background noise, and to determine the incoming direction of seismic energy. I use local arrays to observe scattered seismic waves caused by kilometre-scale heterogeneities in the mantle, and regional arrays to determine waveform variations caused by broader mantle and core structure. Through waveform analysis and full waveform inversion, I extract more information from the wavefield to sharpen the resolution of our models of the Earth.