PubTalk 5/2015 — Breaking Badly:Forecasting California Earthquakes

by Morgan Page, USGS Research Geophysicist

• Scientists cannot currently predict the precise time, location, and size of future damaging earthquakes.
• Historical records of earthquakes in California date back over 150 years.
• Geologists have dug trenches to extend the known history on some faults back to around 1,000 years before today!
• We are learning more about the behavior of large earthquakes, such as the possibility for earthquakes to "link up" multiple geologic faults and the ability of one earthquake to trigger others.
• This information is being used to develop new, sophisticated earthquake forecasting models and to better determine the likely effects of future earthquake in California.