Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publications

Filter Total Items: 2574

Probing reservoir-triggered earthquakes in Koyna, India, through scientific deep drilling

We report here the salient features of the recently concluded International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) workshop in Koyna, India. This workshop was a sequel to the earlier held ICDP workshop in Hyderabad and Koyna in 2011. A total of 49 experts (37 from India and 12 from 8 other countries) spent 3 days reviewing the work carried out during the last 3 years based on the recommend
Authors
H. Gupta, Shailesh Nayak, William L. Ellsworth, Y. J. B. Rao, S. Rajan, B.K. Bansal, N. Purnachandra Rao, S. Roy, K. Arora, R. Mohan, V. M. Tiwari, H. V. S. Satyanarayana, P. K. Patro, D. Shashidhar, K. Mallika

CyberShake-derived ground-motion prediction models for the Los Angeles region with application to earthquake early warning

Real-time applications such as earthquake early warning (EEW) typically use empirical ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) along with event magnitude and source-to-site distances to estimate expected shaking levels. In this simplified approach, effects due to finite-fault geometry, directivity and site and basin response are often generalized, which may lead to a significant under- or overes
Authors
Maren Bose, Robert Graves, David Gill, Scott Callaghan, Phillip J. Maechling

Frictional properties of exhumed fault gouges in DFDP-1 cores, Alpine Fault, New Zealand

Principal slip zone gouges recovered during the Deep Fault Drilling Project (DFDP-1), Alpine Fault, New Zealand, were deformed in triaxial friction experiments at temperatures, T, of up to 350°C, effective normal stresses, σn′, of up to 156 MPa, and velocities between 0.01 and 3 µm/s. Chlorite/white mica-bearing DFDP-1A blue gouge, 90.62 m sample depth, is frictionally strong (friction coefficient
Authors
Carolyn Boulton, Diane E. Moore, David A. Lockner, Virginia G. Toy, John Townend, Rupert Southerland

Structure and seismic hazard of the Ventura Avenue anticline and Ventura fault, California: Prospect for large, multisegment ruptures in the Western Transverse Ranges

The Ventura Avenue anticline is one of the fastest uplifting structures in southern California, rising at ∼5  mm/yr. We use well data and seismic reflection profiles to show that the anticline is underlain by the Ventura fault, which extends to seismogenic depth. Fault offset increases with depth, implying that the Ventura Avenue anticline is a fault‐propagation fold. A decrease in the uplift rate
Authors
Judith Hubbard, John H. Shaw, James F. Dolan, Thomas L. Pratt, Lee J. McAuliffe, Thomas K. Rockwell

Latest Quaternary paleoseismology and evidence of distributed dextral shear along the Mohawk Valley fault zone, northern Walker Lane, California

The dextral-slip Mohawk Valley fault zone (MVFZ) strikes northwestward along the eastern margin of the Sierra Nevada in the northern Walker Lane. Geodetic block modeling indicates that the MVFZ may accommodate ~3 mm/yr of regional dextral strain, implying that it is the highest slip-rate strike-slip fault in the region; however, only limited geologic data are available to constrain the system’s sl
Authors
Ryan D. Gold, Richard W. Briggs, Stephen Personius, Anthony J. Crone, Shannon A. Mahan, Stephen Angster

Ground-motion site effects from multimethod shear-wave velocity characterization at 16 seismograph stations deployed for aftershocks of the August 2011 Mineral, Virginia earthquake

We characterize shear-wave velocity versus depth (Vs profile) at 16 portable seismograph sites through the epicentral region of the 2011 Mw 5.8 Mineral (Virginia, USA) earthquake to investigate ground-motion site effects in the area. We used a multimethod acquisition and analysis approach, where active-source horizontal shear (SH) wave reflection and refraction as well as active-source multichanne
Authors
William J. Stephenson, Jackson K. Odum, Daniel E. McNamara, Robert A. Williams, Stephen J Angster

History of late Holocene earthquakes at the Willow Creek site on the Nephi segment, Wasatch fault zone, Utah

This 43-page report presents new data from the Willow Creek site that provides well-defined and narrow bounds on the times of the three youngest earthquakes on the southern strand of the Nephi segment, Wasatch Fault zone, and refines the time of the youngest earthquake to about 200 years ago. This is the youngest surface rupture on the entire Wasatch fault zone, which occurred about a century or l
Authors
Anthony J. Crone, Stephen F. Personius, Christopher DuRoss, Michael N. Machette, Shannon A. Mahan

Relation of landslides triggered by the Kiholo Bay earthquake to modeled ground motion

The 2006 Kiholo Bay, Hawaii, earthquake triggered high concentrations of rock falls and slides in the steep canyons of the Kohala Mountains along the north coast of Hawaii. Within these mountains and canyons a complex distribution of landslides was triggered by the earthquake shaking. In parts of the area, landslides were preferentially located on east‐facing slopes, whereas in other parts of the
Authors
Edwin L. Harp, Stephen H. Hartzell, Randall W. Jibson, L. Ramirez-Guzman, Robert G. Schmitt

Estimating structural collapse fragility of generic building typologies using expert judgment

The structured expert elicitation process proposed by Cooke (1991), hereafter referred to as Cooke’s approach, is applied for the first time in the realm of structural collapse-fragility assessment for selected generic construction types. Cooke’s approach works on the principle of objective calibration scoring of judgments coupled with hypothesis testing used in classical statistics. The perf
Authors
Kishor S. Jaiswal, D. J. Wald, D. Perkins, W. P. Aspinall, Anne S. Kiremidjian

Predicting the spatial extent of liquefaction from geospatial and earthquake specific parameters

The spatially extensive damage from the 2010-2011 Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake events are a reminder of the need for liquefaction hazard maps for anticipating damage from future earthquakes. Liquefaction hazard mapping as traditionally relied on detailed geologic mapping and expensive site studies. These traditional techniques are difficult to apply globally for rapid response or loss esti
Authors
Jing Zhu, Laurie G. Baise, Eric M. Thompson, David J. Wald, Keith L. Knudsen

Seismometer Self-Noise and Measuring Methods

Seismometer self-noise is usually not considered when selecting and using seismic waveform data in scientific research as it is typically assumed that the self-noise is negligibly small compared to seismic signals. However, instrumental noise is part of the noise in any seismic record, and in particular, at frequencies below a few mHz, the instrumental noise has a frequency-dependent character and
Authors
Adam T. Ringler, R. Sleeman, Charles R. Hutt, Lind S. Gee

Hillslope-scale experiment demonstrates role of convergence during two-step saturation

Subsurface flow and storage dynamics at hillslope scale are difficult to ascertain, often in part due to a lack of sufficient high-resolution measurements and an incomplete understanding of boundary conditions, soil properties, and other environmental aspects. A continuous and extreme rainfall experiment on an artificial hillslope at Biosphere 2's Landscape Evolution Observatory (LEO) resulted in
Authors
A. I. Gevaert, A. J. Teuling, R. Uijlenhoet, Stephen B. DeLong, T. E. Huxman, L. A. Pangle, David D. Breshears, J. Chorover, John D. Pelletier, S. R. Saleska, X. Zeng, Peter A. Troch