Prior to the quake, geoscientists had placed GPS markers in and around the San Francisco area. Immediately after the quake, researchers converged on the area to collect and compare the pre- and post-quake GPS data, which revealed the direction and speed of surface movements, allowing scientists to infer the pattern of slip on the fault plane that had ruptured far underground.

On a muggy day in mid-July 2009, a lone seven-story condominium complex northwest of Kobe, Japan, was violently shaken by an earthquake. Onlookers watched the 23-unit, wood-frame tower sway and bounce while, inside the building, furniture toppled and plates clattered to the floor. No one was hurt during the highly localized event and there was only minimal damage, in part because the building’s wooden skeleton had been augmented to better resist earthquake shaking, but also because the whole event — from the seismicity to the partially furnished building — was just a test.

Answering a community-wide call from geoscience societies and employers, an American Geoscience Institute inter-society ad hoc committee examined the issue of academic geosciences program accreditation. The committee has concluded its two years of study, and released a report that details three observations regarding the classification of college and university geoscience programs.

Robert D. Hatcher Jr., Distinguished Scientist and Professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and former President of the American Geosciences Institute (AGI), was unanimously approved by the AGI Executive Committee to receive the 2014 Marcus Milling Legendary Geoscientist Medal.