Publications
Educational Publications
Educational Publications
Selected publications about earthquakes In plain language.
Filter Total Items: 2574
Bayesian historical earthquake relocation: an example from the 1909 Taipei earthquake
Locating earthquakes from the beginning of the modern instrumental period is complicated by the fact that there are few good-quality seismograms and what traveltimes do exist may be corrupted by both large phase-pick errors and clock errors. Here, we outline a Bayesian approach to simultaneous inference of not only the hypocentre location but also the clock errors at each station and the origin ti
Authors
Sarah E. Minson, William H.K. Lee
Implementation of NGA-West2 ground motion models in the 2014 U.S. National Seismic Hazard Maps
The U.S. National Seismic Hazard Maps (NSHMs) have been an important component of seismic design regulations in the United States for the past several decades. These maps present earthquake ground shaking intensities at specified probabilities of being exceeded over a 50-year time period. The previous version of the NSHMs was developed in 2008; during 2012 and 2013, scientists at the U.S. Geologic
Authors
Sanaz Rezaeian, Mark D. Petersen, Morgan P. Moschetti, Peter Powers, Stephen C. Harmsen, Arthur D. Frankel
Path durations for use in the stochastic‐method simulation of ground motions
The stochastic method of ground‐motion simulation assumes that the energy in a target spectrum is spread over a duration DT. DT is generally decomposed into the duration due to source effects (DS) and to path effects (DP). For the most commonly used source, seismological theory directly relates DS to the source corner frequency, accounting for the magnitude scaling of DT. In contrast, DP is relate
Authors
David M. Boore, Eric M. Thompson
Pulverization provides a mechanism for the nucleation of earthquakes at low stress on strong faults
An earthquake occurs when rock that has been deformed under stress rebounds elastically along a fault plane (Gilbert, 1884; Reid, 1911), radiating seismic waves through the surrounding earth. Rupture along the entire fault surface does not spontaneously occur at the same time, however. Rather the rupture starts in one tiny area, the rupture nucleation zone, and spreads sequentially along the fault
Authors
Karen R. Felzer
Estimating earthquake magnitudes from reported intensities in the central and eastern United States
A new macroseismic intensity prediction equation is derived for the central and eastern United States and is used to estimate the magnitudes of the 1811–1812 New Madrid, Missouri, and 1886 Charleston, South Carolina, earthquakes. This work improves upon previous derivations of intensity prediction equations by including additional intensity data, correcting magnitudes in the intensity datasets to
Authors
Oliver S. Boyd, Chris H. Cramer
Drift issues of tall buildings during the March 11, 2011 M9.0 Tohoku earthquake, Japan - Implications
One of the most significant effects of the M9.0 Tohoku, Japan earthquake of March 11, 2011 is the now well-known long duration (>10 minutes) shaking of buildings in Japan – particularly those in Tokyo (~350-375 km from the epicenter) and in places as far as Osaka (~770 km from the epicenter). Although none collapsed, the strong shaking caused many tall buildings not to be functional for days and
Authors
Mehmet Çelebi, Izuru Okawa
Comparison of NGA-West2 directivity models
Five directivity models have been developed based on data from the NGA-West2 database and based on numerical simulations of large strike-slip and reverse-slip earthquakes. All models avoid the use of normalized rupture dimension, enabling them to scale up to the largest earthquakes in a physically reasonable way. Four of the five models are explicitly “narrow-band” (in which the effect of directiv
Authors
Paul A. Spudich, Badie Rowshandel, Shrey Shahi, Jack W. Baker, Brian S-J Chiou
Adding fling effects to processed ground‐motion time histories
Fling is the engineering term for the effects of the permanent tectonic offset, caused by a rupturing fault in the recorded ground motions near the fault. It is expressed by a one‐sided pulse in ground velocity and a nonzero final displacement at the end of shaking. Standard processing of earthquake time histories removes some of the fling effects that may be required for engineering applications.
Authors
Ronnie Kamai, Norman A. Abrahamson, Robert Graves
NGA-West2 Research Project
The NGA-West2 project is a large multidisciplinary, multi-year research program on the Next Generation Attenuation (NGA) models for shallow crustal earthquakes in active tectonic regions. The research project has been coordinated by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), with extensive technical interactions among many individuals and organizations. NGA-West2 addresses several
Authors
Yousef Bozorgnia, Norman A. Abrahamson, Linda Al Atik, Timothy D. Ancheta, Gail M. Atkinson, Jack W. Baker, Annemarie S. Baltay, David M. Boore, Kenneth W. Campbell, Brian S.J. Chiou, Robert B. Darragh, Steve Day, Jennifer Donahue, Robert W. Graves, Nick Gregor, Thomas C. Hanks, I. M. Idriss, Ronnie Kamai, Tadahiro Kishida, Albert Kottke, Stephen A. Mahin, Sanaz Rezaeian, Badie Rowshandel, Emel Seyhan, Shrey Shahi, Tom Shantz, Walter Silva, Paul A. Spudich, Jonathan P. Stewart, Jennie Watson-Lamprey, Kathryn Wooddell, Robert Youngs
Imaging P and S attenuation in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region, northern California
We obtain 3-D Qp and Qs models for the Delta region of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, a large fluvial-agricultural portion of the Great Valley located between the Sierra Nevada batholith and the San Francisco Bay - Coast Ranges region of active faulting. Path attenuation t* values have been obtained for P and S data from 124 distributed earthquakes, with a longer variable window for S base
Authors
Donna Eberhart-Phillips, Clifford Thurber, Jon Peter B. Fletcher
Geologic logs of geotechnical cores from the subsurface Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, California
This report presents and summarizes descriptive geologic logs of geotechnical cores collected from 2009–12 in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California, by the California Department of Water Resources. Graphic logs are presented for 1,785.7 ft of retained cores from 56 borehole sites throughout the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Most core sections are from a depth of ~100–200 feet. Cores primari
Authors
Katherine L. Maier, Daniel J. Ponti, John C. Tinsley, Emma Gatti, Mark Pagenkopp
Documentation for the 2014 update of the United States national seismic hazard maps
The national seismic hazard maps for the conterminous United States have been updated to account for new methods, models, and data that have been obtained since the 2008 maps were released (Petersen and others, 2008). The input models are improved from those implemented in 2008 by using new ground motion models that have incorporated about twice as many earthquake strong ground shaking data and by
Authors
Mark D. Petersen, Morgan P. Moschetti, Peter M. Powers, Charles S. Mueller, Kathleen M. Haller, Arthur D. Frankel, Yuehua Zeng, Sanaz Rezaeian, Stephen C. Harmsen, Oliver S. Boyd, Edward H. Field, Rui Chen, Kenneth S. Rukstales, Nico Luco, Russell L. Wheeler, Robert A. Williams, Anna H. Olsen