Profile

Research Scientist – Earthquake Seismologist

Geological Survey of Canada
Pacific Division, Sidney Subdivision
Natural Resources Canada

Office #4752, Pacific Geoscience Centre
9860 West Saanich Road, Sidney, BC
Email: andrew.schaeffer@canada.ca
Phone: +1 (250) 363-6430

Previously at:
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Ottawa

FSS Hall, 120 University Pr.
Ottawa, Canada
Email: andrew <dot> schaeffer <at> uottawa.ca
Prof. Pascal Audet’s Staff Page

Geophysics Section, School of Cosmic Physics
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

5 Merrion Square
Dublin, Ireland
Email: aschaeff -at- cp.dias.ie
My DIAS Staff Page

My research is focused on understanding the mechanics and dynamics of the Earth system, in particularly the structure and evolution of the upper mantle and transition zone and their relationship to seismicity and seismic hazard. My interests span the continental scales, with a strong focus on North America, in particular the Canadian Polar regions. How have dynamic processes, both past and present, formed the mechanical, chemical, and thermal structure of the crust, lithosphere, and asthenosphere? What is the nature of the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary? What role has the transition zone played in modulating the Earth’s evolution and, in particular, what were its effects on mass transfer and chemical differentiation between the upper and lower mantle?

Biography
I am a Research Scientist in Earthquake Seismology in the Pacific Division of the Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada.

I was previously a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Ottawa in the Geophysics group with Professor Pascal Audet. At UOttawa, I started as an NSERC Postdoctoral Scholar for 2 years (2015-2017) and then a Banting fellow (2017-2018).

My PhD was carried out jointly between the Geophysics Section of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) with Sergei Lebedev, and the Geophysics Group in University College Dublin with Chris Bean. I started my PhD in January of 2010 and completed March 2014. During my PhD, I worked on generating new global, high-resolution, shear velocity and azimuthal anisotropy models of the Earth’s upper mantle and transition zone. The new model, SL2013sv, is constrained by waveform fits derived from more than half a million vertical-component seismograms, and includes both the istropic shear-speed perturbations and 2-Ψ azimuthally anisotropic perturbations from our 3D reference model. I also worked on parameterizing a radially anisotropic model, which utilizes our massive new dataset of both Rayleigh (vertical-component) and Love (horizontal component) waveform fits.

I completed both my B.Sc. and M.Sc. in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, at the University of British Columbia. My Supervisor in Vancouver was Michael Bostock.

PhD Thesis: Imaging the structure and dynamics of the Earth’s upper mantle and crust using multimode waveform tomography.
MSc Thesis: Nature of a low-velocity zone atop the transition zone in Northwestern Canada.
BSc Thesis: Receiver function analysis of teleseismic S-waves applied to the Cascadia subduction zone.