Anchorage, Alaska: We pay tribute this week to the life and works of George Plafker, a geoscientist integral to understanding Alaska’s earthquake hazards, who passed a week ago.
Plafker published over 70 peer-reviewed studies, most of which were on Alaska topics from the Gulf to the Brooks Range.
He was on the ground right after the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake, covering hundreds of kilometers to catalog evidence of emerged intertidal creatures that indicated seafloor uplift.
Plafker’s work on the 1964 quake helped define subduction zones as the sites of the largest earthquakes, providing key evidence to support plate tectonic theory.
Digging into the rupture zone, he helped identify nine giant seismic events in Alaska’s distant past, laying the foundation for the state’s seismic hazard maps.
Plafker’s work in this area is immortalized in the book The Great Quake. You can learn more about earthquakes in Alaska under the Earthquakes tab on earthquake.alaska.edu, and follow us on social media at akearthquake
