Dr. Feng Jiang is a Research Assistant Professor of Geophysics at the Southern University of Science and Technology, specializing in magnetotelluric methods. He also serves as a guest researcher at the Earthquake Research Institute of the University of Tokyo, where he contributes to measuring the viscosity structure of the oceanic asthenosphere and to monitoring fluid migration beneath the seafloor. He earned his Ph.D. in 2019 from the Institute of Geology at the China Earthquake Administration. His research to date spans a wide range of seafloor and continental magnetotelluric exploration and monitoring projects across diverse regions, including the Tibetan Plateau, Antarctica, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In collaboration with geophysical instrument engineers, he is contributing to the development of a new generation of magnetotelluric receivers, designed to seamlessly adapt to diverse environments and enable more efficient exploration and monitoring of subsurface fluid processes.
Seismic gaps and slow slip events are widely recognized as two critical indicators of large earthquake potential, even though their underlying mechanisms and interactions remain elusive. A growing body of evidence suggests that the presence and dynamics of fluids at fault depth play a pivotal role in governing these phenomena. Magnetotellurics (MT) offers a uniquely sensitive method for characterizing these fluids within the crust and upper mantle through electrical resistivity imaging.
This lecture will briefly review MT studies of seismic gaps and slow-slip areas to highlight their similarities and differences in resistivity. Subsequently, I will introduce recent MT imaging results from a continental seismic gap along the Litang Fault (southeastern Tibetan Plateau), as well as two years of seafloor MT monitoring data that captured a large slow slip event at the Northern Hikurangi Subduction Zone. Finally, the potential connections between seismic gaps, slow slip, and deep fluid dynamics on a fault will be discussed in general. I propose that an integrated perspective—combining observations of fault behavior with evidence of fluid presence and migration—may offer a more robust approach for assessing the risk of future catastrophic ruptures.