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Earthquake Science Center

The Earthquake Science Center has been the flagship research center of the USGS in the western United States for more than 50 years. It is the largest USGS research center in the West and houses extensive laboratories, scientific infrastructure, and research facilities.

News

USGS Seeks Earthquake Hazards Research Proposals

USGS Seeks Earthquake Hazards Research Proposals

Earthquakes can strike faster than a New York minute – What to do when the ground shakes...

Earthquakes can strike faster than a New York minute – What to do when the ground shakes...

New USGS map shows where damaging earthquakes are most likely to occur in US

New USGS map shows where damaging earthquakes are most likely to occur in US

Publications

The SCEC/USGS community stress drop validation study using the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence

We introduce a community stress drop validation study using the 2019 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake sequence, in which researchers are invited to use a common dataset to independently estimate comparable measurements using a variety of methods. Stress drop is the change in average shear stress on a fault during earthquake rupture, and as such is a key parameter in many ground motion, rupture s
Authors
Annemarie S. Baltay, Rachel E Abercrombie, Shanna Xianhui Chu, Taka'aki Taira

Elastic stress coupling between supraglacial lakes

Supraglacial lakes have been observed to drain within hours of each other, leading to the hypothesis that stress transmission following one drainage may be sufficient to induce hydro-fracture-driven drainages of other nearby lakes. However, available observations characterizing drainage-induced stress perturbations have been insufficient to evaluate this hypothesis. Here, we use ice-sheet surface-
Authors
L. Stevens, S. Das, M. D. Behn, Jeffrey McGuire, Ching-Yao Lai, I. Joughin, S LaRochelle, M. Nettles

Using open-science workflow tools to produce SCEC CyberShake physics-based probabilistic seismic hazard models

The Statewide (formerly Southern) California Earthquake Center (SCEC) conducts multidisciplinary earthquake system science research that aims to develop predictive models of earthquake processes, and to produce accurate seismic hazard information that can improve societal preparedness and resiliency to earthquake hazards. As part of this program, SCEC has developed the CyberShake platform, which c
Authors
Scott Callaghan, Phillip J. Maechling, Fabio Silva, Mei-Hui Su, Kevin R. Milner, Robert Graves, Kim Olsen, Yifeng Cui, Karan Vahi, Albert Kottke, Christine A Goulet, Ewa Deelman, Tom Jordan, Yehuda Ben-Zion