Louisiana has never been known for earthquakes. Most in the United States occur along fault lines on the West Coast or on the islands of Hawaii. But since December 2025, a string of earthquakes has rocked northern Louisiana.
Louisiana called on Tulane University professor and geoscientist Cynthia Ebinger to research the causes of these natural disasters.
Ebinger, the Marshall-Heape Chair in Geology at Tulane, has always enjoyed the outdoors. She studied oceanography at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, where she earned her Ph.D. and became more interested in fault lines and volcanoes. After some time traveling on ships and studying the ocean, she received a job offer from Tulane…