Publications
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UCERF3: A new earthquake forecast for California's complex fault system
With innovations, fresh data, and lessons learned from recent earthquakes, scientists have developed a new earthquake forecast model for California, a region under constant threat from potentially damaging events. The new model, referred to as the third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, or "UCERF" (http://www.WGCEP.org/UCERF3), provides authoritative estimates of the magnitude, locat
Authors
Edward H. Field
The data quality analyzer: a quality control program for seismic data
The U.S. Geological Survey's Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory (ASL) has several initiatives underway to enhance and track the quality of data produced from ASL seismic stations and to improve communication about data problems to the user community. The Data Quality Analyzer (DQA) is one such development and is designed to characterize seismic station data quality in a quantitative and automate
Authors
Adam T. Ringler, M.T. Hagerty, James F. Holland, A. Gonzales, Lind S. Gee, J.D. Edwards, David C. Wilson, Adam Baker
Long‐term time‐dependent probabilities for the third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF3)
The 2014 Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities (WGCEP 2014) presents time-dependent earthquake probabilities for the third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF3). Building on the UCERF3 time-independent model, published previously, renewal models are utilized to represent elastic-rebound-implied probabilities. A new methodology has been developed that solves applica
Authors
Edward H. Field, Glenn P. Biasi, Peter Bird, Timothy E. Dawson, Karen R. Felzer, David A. Jackson, Kaj M. Johnson, Thomas H. Jordan, Christopher Madden, Andrew J. Michael, Kevin Milner, Morgan T. Page, Thomas E. Parsons, Peter Powers, Bruce E. Shaw, Wayne R. Thatcher, Ray J. Weldon, Yuehua Zeng
Hydroclimatic conditions preceding the March 2014 Oso landslide
The 22 March 2014 Oso landslide was one of the deadliest in U.S. history, resulting in 43 fatalities and the destruction of more than 40 structures. We examine synoptic conditions, precipitation records and soil moisture reconstructions in the days, months, and years preceding the landslide. Atmospheric reanalysis shows a period of enhanced moisture transport to the Pacific Northwest beginning on
Authors
Brian Henn, Qian Cao, Dennis P. Lettenmaier, Christopher S. Magirl, Clifford Mass, J. Brent Bower, Michael St. Laurent, Yixin Mao, Sanja Perica
Real-time validation of the Dst Predictor model
The Dst Predictor model, which has been running real-time in the Space Weather Analysis and Forecast System (SWAFS), provides 1-hour and 4-hour forecasts of the Dst index. This is useful for awareness of impending geomagnetic activity, as well as driving other real-time models that use Dst as an input. In this report, we examine the performance of this forecast model in detail. When validating ind
Authors
James P. McCollough, Shawn L. Young, E. Joshua Rigler, Hal A. Simpson
Landslide modeling and forecasting—recent progress by the u.s. geological survey
Landslide studies by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are focused on two main objectives: scientific understanding and forecasting. The first objective is to gain better understanding of the physical processes involved in landslide initiation and movement. This objective is largely in support of the second objective, to develop predictive capabilities to answer the main hazard questions. Answers
Authors
Rex L. Baum, Jason W. Kean
Seismicity of the Earth 1900-2013, seismotectonics of South America (Nazca Plate Region)
The South American arc extends over 7,000 kilometers (km), from the Chilean margin triple junction offshore of southern Chile, to its intersection with the Panama fracture zone, offshore of the southern coast of Panama in Central America. It marks the plate boundary between the subducting Nazca plate and the South America plate, where the oceanic crust and lithosphere of the Nazca plate begin thei
Authors
Gavin P. Hayes, Gregory M. Smoczyk, Harley M. Benz, Kevin P. Furlong, Antonio Villaseñor
Predicting locations of post-fire debris-flow erosionin the San Gabriel Mountains of southern California
Timely hazard assessments are needed to assess post-fire debris flows that may
impact communities located within and adjacent to recently burned areas. Implementing
existing models for debris-flow probability and magnitude can be time-consuming because
the geographic extent for applying the models is manually defined. In this study, a model is
presented for predicting locations of post-fire debris
Authors
Joseph E. Gartner, P.M Santi, Susan H. Cannon
Earthquake hypocenters and focal mechanisms in central Oklahoma reveal a complex system of reactivated subsurface strike-slip faulting
The sharp increase in seismicity over a broad region of central Oklahoma has raised concern regarding the source of the activity and its potential hazard to local communities and energy industry infrastructure. Since early 2010, numerous organizations have deployed temporary portable seismic stations in central Oklahoma in order to record the evolving seismicity. In this study, we apply a multiple
Authors
Daniel E. McNamara, Harley M. Benz, Robert B. Herrmann, Eric A. Bergman, Paul S. Earle, Austin F. Holland, Randy W. Baldwin, A. Gassner
Beach ridges as paleoseismic indicators of abrupt coastal subsidence during subduction zone earthquakes, and implications for Alaska-Aleutian subduction zone paleoseismology, southeast coast of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
The Kenai section of the eastern Alaska-Aleutian subduction zone straddles two areas of high slip in the 1964 great Alaska earthquake and is the least studied of the three megathrust segments (Kodiak, Kenai, Prince William Sound) that ruptured in 1964. Investigation of two coastal sites in the eastern part of the Kenai segment, on the southeast coast of the Kenai Peninsula, identified evidence for
Authors
Harvey M. Kelsey, Robert C. Witter, Simon E. Engelhart, Richard W. Briggs, Alan R. Nelson, Peter J. Haeussler, D. Reide Corbett
Landslide mobility and hazards: implications of the 2014 Oso disaster
Landslides reflect landscape instability that evolves over meteorological and geological timescales, and they also pose threats to people, property, and the environment. The severity of these threats depends largely on landslide speed and travel distance, which are collectively described as landslide “mobility”. To investigate causes and effects of mobility, we focus on a disastrous landslide that
Authors
Richard M. Iverson, David L. George, Kate E. Allstadt, Mark E. Reid, Brian D. Collins, James W. Vallance, Steve P. Schilling, Jonathan W. Godt, Charles Cannon, Christopher S. Magirl, Rex L. Baum, Jeffrey A. Coe, William Schulz, J. Brent Bower
Time‐dependent renewal‐model probabilities when date of last earthquake is unknown
We derive time-dependent, renewal-model earthquake probabilities for the case in which the date of the last event is completely unknown, and compare these with the time-independent Poisson probabilities that are customarily used as an approximation in this situation. For typical parameter values, the renewal-model probabilities exceed Poisson results by more than 10% when the forecast duration exc
Authors
Edward H. Field, Thomas H. Jordan