Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publications

Filter Total Items: 7239

Localized fault-zone dilatancy and surface inelasticity of the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes

Earthquakes produce a spectrum of elastic and inelastic deformation processes that are reflected across various length and time scales. While elasticity has long dominated research assumptions in active tectonics, increasing interest has focused on the inelastic characteristics of earthquakes, particularly those of the surface fault rupture zone itself, and how they relate to ground rupture hazard
Authors
William D. Barnhart, Ryan D. Gold, James Hollingsworth

Seismic reflection imaging of the low-angle Panamint normal fault system, eastern California

Shallowly dipping (<30°) low‐angle normal faults (LANFs) have been documented globally; however, examples of active LANFs in continental settings are limited. The western margin of the Panamint Range in eastern California is defined by a LANF that dips west beneath Panamint Valley and has evidence of Quaternary motion. In addition, high‐angle dextral‐oblique normal faults displace middle to late Q
Authors
Ryan D. Gold, William J. Stephenson, Richard W. Briggs, Christopher DuRoss, Eric Kirby, Edward W Woolery, Jaime Delano, Jackson K. Odum

Identifying the greatest earthquakes of the past 2000 years at the Nehalem River Estuary, Northern Oregon Coast, USA

We infer a history of three great megathrust earthquakes during the past 2000 years at the Nehalem River estuary based on the lateral extent of sharp (≤3 mm) peat-mud stratigraphic contacts in cores and outcrops, coseismic subsidence as interpreted from fossil diatom assemblages and reconstructed with foraminiferal assemblages using a Bayesian transfer function, and regional correlation of 14C-mod
Authors
Alan R. Nelson, Andrea D. Hawkes, Yuki Sawai, Simon E. Engelhart, Robert C. Witter, Wendy C. Grant-Walter, Lee-Ann Bradley, Tina Dura, Niamh Cahill, Benajamin P. Horton

Extraformational sediment recycling on Mars

Extraformational sediment recycling (old sedimentary rock to new sedimentary rock) is a fundamental aspect of Earth’s geological record; tectonism exposes sedimentary rock, whereupon it is weathered and eroded to form new sediment that later becomes lithified. On Mars, tectonism has been minor, but two decades of orbiter instrument–based studies show that some sedimentary rocks previously buried t
Authors
Kenneth S. Edgett, Steven Banham, Kristen A. Bennett, Lauren A. Edgar, Christopher S. Edwards, Alberto Fairen, Christopher M. Fedo, Deirdra M. Fey, James B. Garvin, John P. Grotzinger, Sanjeev Gupta, Marie Henderson, Christopher H House, Nicolas Mangold, Scott McLennan, Horton E. Newsom, Scott Rowland, Kirsten L. Siebach, Lucy Thompson, Scott VanBommel, Roger C. Wiens, Rebecca Williams, Aileen Yingst

VS30 and Dominant Site Frequency (⁠fd⁠) as Provisional Station ML Corrections (⁠dML⁠) in California

New seismic stations added to a regional seismic network cannot be used to calculate local magnitude (⁠ML⁠) until a revised regionwide amplitude decay function is developed. Each station must record a minimum number of local and regional earthquakes that meet specific amplitude requirements prior to recalibration of the amplitude decay function. Station component adjustments (⁠dML⁠; Uhrhammer et a
Authors
Alan Yong, Elizabeth S. Cochran, Jennifer Andrews, Kenneth Hudson, Antony Martin, Ellen Yu, Julie A Herrick, Jessica Dozal

Selecting three components of ground motions from Conditional Spectra for multiple stripe analyses

For complex structures where the seismic response depends appreciably on the vertical (V) component of ground motion (GM) (e.g., base-isolated buildings, long-span bridges, dams, nuclear power plants), incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) is commonly utilized to estimate seismic risk, where the V components of GM are selected and scaled based on the corresponding horizontal (H) components. The resul
Authors
N. Simon Kwong, Kishor S. Jaiswal, Nicolas Luco, J. W. Baker

Proposed AASHTO guidelines for performance-based seismic bridge design

No abstract available.
Authors
Thomas P. Murphy, Lee Marsh, Stuart Bennion, Ian G. Buckle, Nicolas Luco, Donald Anderson, Mervyn Kowalsky, Jose Restrepo

The impacts of a changing climate to DOD coastal facilities in the tropical Pacific Ocean

The USGS, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Deltares, and the University of Hawaii (UH) recently completed a study investigating the impact of a changing climate and sea-level rise on Roi-Namur Island on Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, which is part of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site (RTS). The isolated location of RTS makes
Authors
Curt D. Storlazzi

Twelve-year dynamics and rainfall thresholds for alternating creep and rapid movement of the Hooskanaden landslide from integrating InSAR, pixel offset tracking, and borehole and hydrological measurements

The Hooskanaden landslide is a large (~600 m wide × 1,300 m long), deep (~30 – 45 m) slide located in southwestern Oregon. Since 1958, it has had five moderate/major movements that catastrophically damaged the intersecting U.S. Highway 101, along with persistent slow wet‐season movements and a long‐term accelerating trend due to coastal erosion. Multiple remote sensing approaches, borehole measure
Authors
Y. Xu, Z. Lu, William Schulz, J. Kim

Assessing the long-term earthquake risk for the US National Bridge Inventory (NBI)

We estimate annualized earthquake loss associated with over 600,000 bridges located throughout the contiguous United States. Each year, the Federal Highway Administration, in partnership with State Departments of Transportation, undertake a massive exercise to update the National Bridge Inventory (NBI) by combining data from states, federal agencies, local jurisdictions, and tribal governments. Th
Authors
Kishor S. Jaiswal, N. Simon Kwong, S. S. Yen, D. Bausch, Kuo-wan Lin, Nicolas Luco, David J. Wald, J. Rozelle

Shallow basin structure and attenuation are key to predicting long shaking duration in Los Angeles Basin

Ground motions in the Los Angeles Basin during large earthquakes are modulated by earthquake ruptures, path effects into the basin, basin effects, and local site response. We analyzed the direct effect of shallow basin structures on shaking duration at a period of 2–10 s in the Los Angeles region through modeling small magnitude, shallow, and deep earthquake pairs. The source depth modulates the b
Authors
Voon H Lai, Robert Graves, Chunquan Yu, Zhongwen Zhan, Don Helmberger

Sea‐level rise will drive divergent sediment transport patterns on fore reefs and reef flats, potentially causing erosion on atoll islands

Atoll reef islands primarily consist of unconsolidated sediment, and their ocean‐facing shorelines are maintained by sediment produced and transported across their reefs. Changes in incident waves can alter cross‐shore sediment exchange and, thus, affect the sediment budget and morphology of atoll reef islands. Here we investigate the influence of sea level rise and projected wave climate change o
Authors
James F Bramante, Andrew D Ashton, Curt D. Storlazzi, Olivia Cheriton, Jeffrey P. Donnelly