Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publications

Filter Total Items: 2186

The new IASPEI standards for determining magnitudes from digital data and their relation to classical magnitudes

Why there is a need for measurement standards of magnitudes: In October 2005, the Commission on Seismic Observation and Interpretation of the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth´s Interior (IASPEI) adopted the summary recommendations made by the IASPEI Working Group on Magnitudes on new measurement standards for widely used local, regional and teleseismic magnitude sc
Authors
Peter Bormann, James W. Dewey

Regional moisture balance control of landslide motion: implications for landslide forecasting in a changing climate

I correlated 12 years of annual movement of 18 points on a large, continuously moving, deep-seated landslide with a regional moisture balance index (moisture balance drought index, MBDI). I used MBDI values calculated from a combination of historical precipitation and air temperature data from A.D. 1895 to 2010, and downscaled climate projections using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Authors
Jeffrey A. Coe

Frequency-dependent attenuation of the Hispaniola Island region of the Caribbean Sea

We determine frequency-dependent attenuation 1/Q(f) for the Hispaniola region using direct S and Lg waves over five distinct passbands from 0.5 to 16 Hz. Data consist of 832 high-quality vertical and horizontal component waveforms recorded on short-period and broadband seismometers from the devastating 12 January 2010 M 7.0 Haiti earthquake and the rich sequence of aftershocks. For the distance ra
Authors
D. McNamara, M. Meremonte, J.Z. Maharrey, S-L. Mildor, J.R. Altidore, D. Anglade, S. E. Hough, D. Given, H. Benz, L. Gee, A. Frankel

Characterization of intrabasin faulting and deformation for earthquake hazards in southern Utah Valley, Utah, from high-resolution seismic imaging

We conducted active and passive seismic imaging investigations along a 5.6-km-long, east–west transect ending at the mapped trace of the Wasatch fault in southern Utah Valley. Using two-dimensional (2D) P-wave seismic reflection data, we imaged basin deformation and faulting to a depth of 1.4 km and developed a detailed interval velocity model for prestack depth migration and 2D ground-motion simu
Authors
William J. Stephenson, Jack K. Odum, Robert A. Williams, John H. McBride, Iris Tomlinson

Estimating pole/zero errors in GSN-IRIS/USGS network calibration metadata

Mapping the digital record of a seismograph into true ground motion requires the correction of the data by some description of the instrument's response. For the Global Seismographic Network (Butler et al., 2004), as well as many other networks, this instrument response is represented as a Laplace domain pole–zero model and published in the Standard for the Exchange of Earthquake Data (SEED) forma
Authors
A. T. Ringler, C. R. Hutt, R. Aster, H. Bolton, L.S. Gee, T. Storm

Aftershock seismicity of the 2010 Maule Mw=8.8 Chile, earthquake: Correlation between co-seismic slip models and aftershock distribution?

The 27 February 2010 Maule, Chile (Mw=8.8) earthquake is one of the best instrumentally observed subduction zone megathrust events. Here we present locations, magnitudes and cumulative equivalent moment of the first -2 months of aftershocks, recorded on a temporary network deployed within 2 weeks of the occurrence of the mainshock. Using automatically-determined onset times and a back projection a
Authors
A. Rietbrock, I. Ryder, G. Hayes, C. Haberland, D. Comte, S. Roecker

Including foreshocks and aftershocks in time-independent probabilistic seismic hazard analyses

Time‐independent probabilistic seismic‐hazard analysis treats each source as being temporally and spatially independent; hence foreshocks and aftershocks, which are both spatially and temporally dependent on the mainshock, are removed from earthquake catalogs. Yet, intuitively, these earthquakes should be considered part of the seismic hazard, capable of producing damaging ground motions. In this
Authors
Oliver S. Boyd

Modelling rating curves using remotely sensed LiDAR data

Accurate stream discharge measurements are important for many hydrological studies. In remote locations, however, it is often difficult to obtain stream flow information because of the difficulty in making the discharge measurements necessary to define stage-discharge relationships (rating curves). This study investigates the feasibility of defining rating curves by using a fluid mechanics-based m
Authors
Marcus Nathanson, Jason W. Kean, Thomas J. Grabs, Jan Seibert, Hjalmar Laudon, Steve W. Lyon

Relative azimuth inversion by way of damped maximum correlation estimates

Horizontal seismic data are utilized in a large number of Earth studies. Such work depends on the published orientations of the sensitive axes of seismic sensors relative to true North. These orientations can be estimated using a number of different techniques: SensOrLoc (Sensitivity, Orientation and Location), comparison to synthetics (Ekstrom and Busby, 2008), or by way of magnetic compass. Curr
Authors
A. T. Ringler, J.D. Edwards, C. R. Hutt, F. Shelly

Spatial aspects of building and population exposure data and their implications for global earthquake exposure modeling

This paper discusses spatial aspects of the global exposure dataset and mapping needs for earthquake risk assessment. We discuss this in the context of development of a Global Exposure Database for the Global Earthquake Model (GED4GEM), which requires compilation of a multi-scale inventory of assets at risk, for example, buildings, populations, and economic exposure. After defining the relevant sp
Authors
F. Dell’Acqua, P. Gamba, K. Jaiswal

W phase source inversion for moderate to large earthquakes (1990-2010)

Rapid characterization of the earthquake source and of its effects is a growing field of interest. Until recently, it still took several hours to determine the first-order attributes of a great earthquake (e.g. Mw≥ 7.5), even in a well-instrumented region. The main limiting factors were data saturation, the interference of different phases and the time duration and spatial extent of the source rup
Authors
Zacharie Duputel, Luis Rivera, Hiroo Kanamori, Gavin P. Hayes