Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publications

Filter Total Items: 1857

Shallow microearthquakes near Chongqing, China triggered by the Rayleigh waves of the 2015 M7.8 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake

We present a case of remotely triggered seismicity in Southwest China by the 2015/04/25 M7.8 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake. A local magnitude ML3.8 event occurred near the Qijiang district south of Chongqing city approximately 12 min after the Gorkha mainshock. Within 30km of this ML3.8 event there are 62 earthquakes since 2009 and only 7 ML>3events, which corresponds to a likelihood of 0.3% for a ML>3
Authors
Libo Han, Zhigang Peng, Christopher W. Johnson, Fred Pollitz, Lu Li, Baoshan Wang, Jing Wu, Qiang Li, Hongmei Wei

Accounting for orphaned aftershocks in the earthquake background rate

Aftershocks often occur within cascades of triggered seismicity in which each generation of aftershocks triggers an additional generation, and so on. The rate of earthquakes in any particular generation follows Omori's law, going approximately as 1/t. This function decays rapidly, but is heavy-tailed, and aftershock sequences may persist for long times at a rate that is difficult to discriminate f
Authors
Nicholas van der Elst

Proceedings of the 11th United States-Japan natural resources panel for earthquake research, Napa Valley, California, November 16–18, 2016

The UJNR Panel on Earthquake Research promotes advanced research toward a more fundamental understanding of the earthquake process and hazard estimation. The Eleventh Joint meeting was extremely beneficial in furthering cooperation and deepening understanding of problems common to both Japan and the United States.The meeting included productive exchanges of information on approaches to systematic

Physical properties of sidewall cores from Decatur, Illinois

To better assess the reservoir conditions influencing the induced seismicity hazard near a carbon dioxide sequestration demonstration site in Decatur, Ill., core samples from three deep drill holes were tested to determine a suite of physical properties including bulk density, porosity, permeability, Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, and failure strength. Representative samples of the shale cap ro
Authors
Carolyn A. Morrow, J. Ole Kaven, Diane E. Moore, David A. Lockner

Influence of pore pressure change on coseismic volumetric strain

Coseismic strain is fundamentally important for understanding crustal response to changes of stress after earthquakes. The elastic dislocation model has been widely applied to interpreting observed shear deformation caused by earthquakes. The application of the same theory to interpreting volumetric strain, however, has met with difficulty, especially in the far field of earthquakes. Predicted vol
Authors
Chi-Yuen Wang, Andrew J. Barbour

Source spectral properties of small-to-moderate earthquakes in southern Kansas

The source spectral properties of injection-induced earthquakes give insight into their nucleation, rupture processes, and influence on ground motion. Here we apply a spectral decomposition approach to analyze P-wave spectra and estimate Brune-type stress drop for more than 2000 ML1.5–5.2 earthquakes occurring in southern Kansas from 2014 to 2016. We find that these earthquakes are characterized b
Authors
Daniel T. Trugman, Sara L. Dougherty, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Peter M. Shearer

Influence of the megathrust earthquake cycle on upper-plate deformation in the Cascadia forearc of Washington State, USA

The influence of subduction zone earthquake cycle processes on permanent forearc deformation is poorly understood. In the Cascadia subduction zone forearc of Washington State, USA, deformed and incised fluvial terraces serve as archives of longer-term (103–104 yr) strain manifest as both fluvial incision and slip on upper-plate faults. We focus on comparing these geomorphic records in the Wynooche
Authors
Jaime E. Delano, Colin B. Amos, John P. Loveless, Tammy M. Rittenour, Brian L. Sherrod, Lynch M. Emerson

Conversion of wet glass to melt at lower seismogenic zone conditions: Implications for pseudotachylyte creep

Coseismic frictional melting and the production of quenched glass called pseudotachylyte is a recurring process during earthquakes. To investigate how glassy materials affect the postseismic strength and stability of faults, obsidian gouges were sheared under dry and wet conditions from 200°C to 300°C at ~150 MPa effective normal stress. Dry glass exhibited a brittle rheology at all conditions tes
Authors
Brooks P. Proctor, David A. Lockner, Jacob B. Lowenstern, Nicholas M. Beeler

3-D simulations of M9 earthquakes on the Cascadia Megathrust: Key parameters and uncertainty

Geologic and historical records indicate that the Cascadia subduction zone is capable of generating large, megathrust earthquakes up to magnitude 9. The last great Cascadia earthquake occurred in 1700, and thus there is no direct measure on the intensity of ground shaking or specific rupture parameters from seismic recordings. We use 3-D numerical simulations to generate broadband (0-10 Hz) synthe
Authors
Erin Wirth, Arthur Frankel, John Vidale, Nasser A. Marafi, William J. Stephenson

Wastewater disposal and the earthquake sequences during 2016 near Fairview, Pawnee, and Cushing, Oklahoma

Each of the three earthquake sequences in Oklahoma in 2016—Fairview, Pawnee, and Cushing—appears to have been induced by high-volume wastewater disposal within 10 km. The Fairview M5.1 main shock was part of a 2 year sequence of more than 150 events of M3, or greater; the main shock accounted for about half of the total moment. The foreshocks and aftershocks of the M5.8 Pawnee earthquake were too
Authors
Arthur F. McGarr, Andrew J. Barbour

Forecasting the (un)productivity of the 2014 M 6.0 South Napa aftershock sequence

The 24 August 2014 Mw 6.0 South Napa mainshock produced fewer aftershocks than expected for a California earthquake of its magnitude. In the first 4.5 days, only 59 M≥1.8 aftershocks occurred, the largest of which was an M 3.9 that happened a little over two days after the mainshock. We investigate the aftershock productivity of the South Napa sequence and compare it with other M≥5.5 California st
Authors
Andrea L. Llenos, Andrew J. Michael

Performance of Irikura recipe rupture model generator in earthquake ground motion simulations with Graves and Pitarka hybrid approach

We analyzed the performance of the Irikura and Miyake (Pure and Applied Geophysics 168(2011):85–104, 2011) (IM2011) asperity-based kinematic rupture model generator, as implemented in the hybrid broadband ground motion simulation methodology of Graves and Pitarka (Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 100(5A):2095–2123, 2010), for simulating ground motion from crustal earthquakes of int
Authors
Arben Pitarka, Robert Graves, Kojiro Irikura, Hiroe Miyake, Arthur Rodgers