Publications

In a letter to The Salt Lake Daily Tribune in September 1883, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) geologist G.K. Gilbert warned local residents about the implications of observable fault scarps along the western base of the Wasatch Range. The scarps were evidence that large surface-rupturing earthquakes had occurred in the past and more would likely occur in the future. The main actor in this drama is t

We present here a simplified approach to quantifying regional seismic risk. The seismic risk for a given region can be inferred in terms of average annual loss (AAL) that represents long-term value of earthquake losses in any one year caused from a long-term seismic hazard. The AAL are commonly measured in the form of earthquake shaking-induced deaths, direct economic impacts or indirect losses ca

For almost a century the Baja California peninsula (Peninsula), Gulf of California (Gulf), and broader Sonoran Desert region (figure 1) have drawn geologists and biologists alike to study its unique physical and evolutionary processes (e.g., Wittich 1920; Darton 1921; Nelson 1921; Johnston 1924; Beal 1948; Durham and Allison 1960). The challenge remains to untangle the long, intricate, and at time

Global earthquake activity rate model 1 (GEAR1) estimates the rate of shallow earthquakes with magnitudes 6–9 everywhere on Earth. It was designed to be reproducible and testable. Our preferred hybrid forecast is a log–linear blend of two parent forecasts based on the Global Centroid Moment Tensor (CMT) catalog (smoothing 4602 m≥5.767 shallow earthquakes, 1977–2004) and the Global Strain Rate Map

Four workshops held in 2013–2014 at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis brought together university, government, and insurance industry scientists from countries that straddle plate boundaries and those in plate interiors. Participants were invited; the workshops’ goals involved developing tests of Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis and other e

The strongest San Francisco Bay area earthquake since the 1989 Mw 7.0 Loma Prieta shock struck near Napa on 24 August 2014. Field mapping (Dawson et al., 2014; Earthquake Engineering Research Institute [EERI], 2014; Brocher et al., 2015) and seismic and geodetic source inversions (Barnhart et al., 2015; Dreger et al., 2015; Wei et al., 2015) indicate that a 15-km-long northwest-trending section of

Any good seismologist–carryball (i.e., American football) fan remembers the “beast quake” of 2011. Seahawks fans’ exuberant reactions to a Marshawn Lynch (in beast mode) run caused the stadium to shake enough to be well recorded on a strong‐motion seismograph a block away (Vidale, 2011). With the Seahawks at home for the National Football Conference (NFC) Championship playoffs, both last year and

Although instrumental recordings of earthquakes in the central and eastern United States (CEUS) remain sparse, the U. S. Geological Survey's “Did you feel it?” (DYFI) system now provides excellent characterization of shaking intensities caused by induced and tectonic earthquakes. Seventeen CEUS events are considered between 2013 and 2015. It is shown that for 15 events, observed intensities at epi

To characterize stress and deformation style at the base of the seismogenic zone, we investigate how the mechanical properties of fluid-rock systems respond to variations in temperature and strain rate. The role of fluids on the processes responsible for the brittle-ductile transition in quartz-rich rocks has not been explored at experimental conditions where the kinetic competition between microc

The Bulnay earthquake of July 23, 1905 (Mw 8.3-8.5), in north-central Mongolia, is one of the world's largest recorded intracontinental earthquakes and one of four great earthquakes that occurred in the region during the 20th century. The 375-km-long surface rupture of the left-lateral, strike-slip, N095°E trending Bulnay Fault associated with this earthquake is remarkable for its pronounced expre

This brief article describes refinements to the Graves and Pitarka (2010) broadband ground motion simulation methodology (GP2010 hereafter) that have been implemented in version 14.3 of the SCEC Broadband Platform (BBP). The updated version of our method on the current SCEC BBP is referred to as GP14.3. Our simulation technique is a hybrid approach that combines low-­‐frequency and high-­‐frequenc

Ground-motions for the PEER NGA-East project were simulated using a point-source stochastic method. The simulated motions are provided for distances between of 0 and 1200 km, M from 4 to 8, and 25 ground-motion intensity measures: peak ground velocity (PGV), peak ground acceleration (PGA), and 5%-damped pseudoabsolute response spectral acceleration (PSA) for 23 periods ranging from 0.01 s to 10