Modeling the Earth’s Surface and Deep Interior Through HPC
Researcher Highlight: Liang Xue
Liang Xue, Project Scientist working with Dean Estella Atekwana in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is part of the DRIAR (Dry Rifting in the Albertine-Rhino Graben) project—an international collaboration focused on understanding magma-poor continental rifting. His research combines geophysical observations with numerical models.
Liang Xue is interested in the interactions between climate-driven surface processes and solid Earth dynamics. His research employs geodynamic and landscape evolution models to explore how processes such as sedimentation, river incision, precipitation, and lake level changes influence long-term crustal deformation and short-term earthquake activity.
To investigate these dynamics, he uses HPC@UCD resources to run fully coupled geodynamic and surface process models that simulate tectonic and sedimentary processes in rift environments.
These simulations rely on adaptive meshing and efficient parallel computing to solve complex equations, making HPC essential to his workflow. The models have revealed how inherited crustal structures and surface erosion interact to shape the development of rifts, offering new insights into Earth’s tectonic history.
Liang’s work highlights the critical role of high-performance computing in advancing our scientific understanding of the Earth’s interior. Reflecting on future priorities for HPC development, Liang emphasizes the need for continued innovation, noting that “advancing load balancing and refinement algorithms that work well across CPU and GPU architectures would greatly improve simulation efficiency.” His perspective highlights the importance of scalable, adaptive tools to support the increasingly complex scientific modeling.
Liang’s work exemplifies how cutting-edge computation can unlock new insights into Earth’s most complex and dynamic systems