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Earthquake Hazards Program

The USGS monitors and reports on earthquakes, assesses earthquake impacts and hazards, and conducts targeted research on the causes and effects of earthquakes. We undertake these activities as part of the larger National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), a four-agency partnership established by Congress.

News

Rapid Response Seafloor Seismology

Rapid Response Seafloor Seismology

Five Years After the Ridgecrest Earthquake Sequence

Five Years After the Ridgecrest Earthquake Sequence

USGS deploys “aftershock kits” to study Whitehouse Station earthquakes

USGS deploys “aftershock kits” to study Whitehouse Station earthquakes

Publications

Uncertainty in ground-motion-to-intensity conversions significantly affects earthquake early warning alert regions

We examine how the choice of ground‐motion‐to‐intensity conversion equations (GMICEs) in earthquake early warning (EEW) systems affects resulting alert regions. We find that existing GMICEs can underestimate observed shaking at short rupture distances or overestimate the extent of low‐intensity shaking. Updated GMICEs that remove these biases would improve the accuracy of alert regions for the Sha
Authors
Jessie Saunders, Annemarie S. Baltay, Sarah E. Minson, Maren Böse

The SCEC/USGS community stress drop validation study using the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence

We introduce a community stress drop validation study using the 2019 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake sequence, in which researchers are invited to use a common dataset to independently estimate comparable measurements using a variety of methods. Stress drop is the change in average shear stress on a fault during earthquake rupture, and as such is a key parameter in many ground motion, rupture s
Authors
Annemarie S. Baltay, Rachel E Abercrombie, Shanna Xianhui Chu, Taka'aki Taira

Elastic stress coupling between supraglacial lakes

Supraglacial lakes have been observed to drain within hours of each other, leading to the hypothesis that stress transmission following one drainage may be sufficient to induce hydro-fracture-driven drainages of other nearby lakes. However, available observations characterizing drainage-induced stress perturbations have been insufficient to evaluate this hypothesis. Here, we use ice-sheet surface-
Authors
L. Stevens, S. Das, M. D. Behn, Jeffrey McGuire, Ching-Yao Lai, I. Joughin, S LaRochelle, M. Nettles