Images

A 30-second exposure with the fluorescent lights underneath the table switched on for a split second.

Shake Table at dusk, lit by flourescent lights installed under the table in addition to a high-powered, hand-held flashlight.

View looking southeast along the surface trace of the San Andreas fault in the Carrizo Plain, north of Wallace Creek. Elkhorn Rd. meets the fault near the top of the photo.

D.V. Rogers in the "Bunker," the control center for the project. Real-time earthquakes are received via satellite internet.

Artist D.V. Rogers stomps on one of the geophones surrounding the shake table to trigger it.

Wendy McCausland of the USGS Volcano Disaster Assistance Program and Hani Zahran of the Saudi Geological Survey view the southern end of the surface fault rupture caused by a M5.4 earthquake in the Saudi Arabian desert on May 19, 2009.

Earthquake-triggered landslide on south coast of Haiti near village of Nan Diamant.

This photo was taken by USGS seismologist Susan Hough two months after the magnitude-7 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010. Dr. Hough traveled to Haiti with USGS colleagues Doug Given, Mark Meremonte, and J. Zebulon Maharrey to install seismometers, which monitor the earth's movement and can detect and measure aftershocks.

USGS seimologist Doug Given works with colleagues from the Bureau des Mines et de l'Energie to install a seismometer. Seismometers monitor the earth's movement and can detect and measure aftershocks. Given traveled to Haiti with USGS colleagues Susan Hough, Mark Meremonte, and J. Zebulon Maharrey shortly after a magnitude-7 earthquake struck on Jan. 12, 2010.

The Hotel Montana, shown here, is a portable seismometer site. USGS Seismologists Doug Given, Susan Hough, Mark Meremonte, and J. Zebulon Maharrey traveled to Haiti shortly after the magnitude-7 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010 to install seismometers. Seismometers monitor the earth's movement and can detect and measure aftershocks.

USGS seismologist Doug Given worked with colleagues from the Bureau des Mines et de l'Energie to install a seismometer. Seismometers monitor the earth's movement and can detect and measure aftershocks. Given traveled to Haiti with USGS colleagues Susan Hough, Mark Meremonte, and J.

Earthquake-triggered landslide on south coast of Haiti near village of Nan Diamant.

A tidal marsh bank exposed during low tide on Sitkinak Island, Alaska. The bank reveals ledges of alternating peat and silt. Abrupt uplift and subsidence during large megathrust earthquakes is interpreted to be the cause of the alternating layers.

Base camp, Sitkinak Island.

Blue tents in Longmen near epicenter.

Life in a tent. A grandfather taking the baby outside the tent. The wall with shear crack behind him was their house which suffered serious damage.

Damage to a village house.

Damage to a village house. Longmenxiang.

Geologists examine cores on Sitkinak Island, Alaska.

Geologists examine an exposure of a tidal marsh bank on Sitkinak Island, Alaska. The bank exposes interbedded peat and silt that records sudden vertical land movements associated with megathrust fault slip during large earthquakes.

Geologists extract a hand-driven core from 2-3 m depth on Sitkinak Island, Alaska. The cores contain peat with interbedded sand layers that record inundation of the coast by prehistoric tsunamis. (l-r: Peter Haeussler, USGS; Andrew Kemp, Tufts University; Alan Nelson, USGS)