Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publications

Filter Total Items: 7240

Use of expert judgment elicitation to estimate seismic vulnerability of selected building types

Pooling engineering input on earthquake building vulnerability through an expert judgment elicitation process requires careful deliberation. This article provides an overview of expert judgment procedures including the Delphi approach and the Cooke performance-based method to estimate the seismic vulnerability of a building category.
Authors
K. S. Jaiswal, W. Aspinall, D. Perkins, D. Wald, K.A. Porter

Mauna Loa--history, hazards and risk of living with the world's largest volcano

Mauna Loa on the Island Hawaiʻi is the world’s largest volcano. People residing on its flanks face many hazards that come with living on or near an active volcano, including lava flows, explosive eruptions, volcanic smog, damaging earthquakes, and local tsunami (giant seawaves). The County of Hawaiʻi (Island of Hawaiʻi) is the fastest growing County in the State of Hawaii. Its expanding population
Authors
Frank A. Trusdell

Trimming the UCERF2 hazard logic tree

The Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast 2 (UCERF2) is a fully time‐dependent earthquake rupture forecast developed with sponsorship of the California Earthquake Authority (Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities [WGCEP], 2007; Field et al., 2009). UCERF2 contains 480 logic‐tree branches reflecting choices among nine modeling uncertainties in the earthquake rate model shown
Authors
Keith A. Porter, Edward H. Field, Kevin Milner

The ChemCam Instrument Suite on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Rover: Science objectives and mast unit description

ChemCam is a remote sensing instrument suite on board the "Curiosity" rover (NASA) that uses Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to provide the elemental composition of soils and rocks at the surface of Mars from a distance of 1.3 to 7 m, and a telescopic imager to return high resolution context and micro-images at distances greater than 1.16 m. We describe five analytical capabilities: ro
Authors
S. Maurice, R. C. Wiens, M. Saccoccio, B. Barraclough, O. Gasnault, O. Forni, N. Mangold, D. Baratoux, S. Bender, G. Berger, J. Bernardin, M. Berthé, N. Bridges, D. Blaney, M. Bouyé, P. Caïs, B. Clark, S. Clegg, A. Cousin, D. Cremers, A. Cros, L. DeFlores, C. Derycke, B. Dingler, G. Dromart, B. Dubois, M. Dupieux, E. Durand, L. d'Uston, C. Fabre, B. Faure, A. Gaboriaud, T. Gharsa, Kenneth E. Herkenhoff, E. Kan, L. Kirkland, D. Kouach, J.-L. Lacour, Y. Langevin, J. Lasue, S. Le Mouélic, M. Lescure, E. Lewin, D. Limonadi, G. Manhès, P. Mauchien, C. McKay, P.-Y. Meslin, Y. Michel, E. Miller, Horton E. Newsom, G. Orttner, A. Paillet, L. Parès, Y. Parot, R. Pérez, P. Pinet, F. Poitrasson, B. Quertier, B. Sallé, Christophe Sotin, V. Sautter, H. Séran, J.J. Simmonds, J.-B. Sirven, R. Stiglich, N. Striebig, J.-J. Thocaven, M.J. Toplis, D. Vaniman

Problem of the Love‐Gannon relation between the asymmetric disturbance field and Dst

Love and Gannon (2009) discovered that statistically, over a fifty year period the difference in the dawn and dusk disturbance‐field H component at low latitudes (hourly averaged) is linearly proportional to Dst. If the difference is designated by δDD in units of nT/RE, then the Love‐Gannon (L‐G) relation is δDD = −0.2 Dst. At any time departures from the relation can be large. Nonetheless, the re
Authors
G. L. Siscoe, Jeffrey J. Love, J.L. Gannon

Large-area landslide detection and monitoring with ALOS/PALSAR imagery data over Northern California and Southern Oregon, USA

Multi-temporal ALOS/PALSAR images are used to automatically investigate landslide activity over an area of ~ 200 km by ~ 350 km in northern California and southern Oregon. Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) deformation images, InSAR coherence maps, SAR backscattering intensity images, and a DEM gradient map are combined to detect active landslides by setting individual thresholds. Mo
Authors
Chaoying Zhao, Zhong Lu, Qin Zhang, Juan de la Fuente

Estimating rate uncertainty with maximum likelihood: differences between power-law and flicker–random-walk models

Recent studies have documented that global positioning system (GPS) time series of position estimates have temporal correlations which have been modeled as a combination of power-law and white noise processes. When estimating quantities such as a constant rate from GPS time series data, the estimated uncertainties on these quantities are more realistic when using a noise model that includes tempor
Authors
John O. Langbein

Reading the climate record of the martian polar layered deposits

The martian polar regions have layered deposits of ice and dust. The stratigraphy of these deposits is exposed within scarps and trough walls and is thought to have formed due to climate variations in the past. Insolation has varied significantly over time and caused dramatic changes in climate, but it has remained unclear whether insolation variations could be linked to the stratigraphic record.
Authors
C.S. Hvidberg, K.E. Fishbaugh, M. Winstrup, A. Svensson, S. Byrne, Kenneth E. Herkenhoff

Superposed epoch analysis and storm statistics from 25 years of the global geomagnetic disturbance index, USGS-Dst

Statistics on geomagnetic storms with minima below -50 nanoTesla are compiled using a 25-year span of the 1-minute resolution disturbance index, U.S. Geological Survey Dst. A sudden commencement, main phase minimum, and time between the two has a magnitude of 35 nanoTesla, -100 nanoTesla, and 12 hours, respectively, at the 50th percentile level. The cumulative distribution functions for each of th
Authors
J.L. Gannon

Dawn at Vesta: testing the protoplanetary paradigm

The Dawn spacecraft targeted 4 Vesta, believed to be a remnant intact protoplanet from the earliest epoch of solar system formation, based on analyses of howardite-eucrite-diogenite (HED) meteorites that indicate a differentiated parent body. Dawn observations reveal a giant basin at Vesta's south pole, whose excavation was sufficient to produce Vesta-family asteroids (Vestoids) and HED meteorites
Authors
C.T. Russell, C.A. Raymond, A. Coradini, H.Y. McSween, M.T. Zuber, A. Nathues, Maria-Cristina DeSanctis, R. Jaumann, A.S. Konopliv, F. Preusker, S.W. Asmar, R.S. Park, R. Gaskell, H.U. Keller, S. Mottola, T. Roatsch, J.E.C. Scully, D.E. Smith, P. Tricarico, M.J. Toplis, U.R. Christensen, W. C. Feldman, D. J. Lawrence, T.J. McCoy, T.H. Prettyman, R.C. Reedy, M.E. Sykes, T.N. Titus

Seasonal activity and morphological changes in martian gullies

Recent studies of martian dune and non-dune gullies have suggested a seasonal control on present-day gully activity. The timing of current gully activity, especially activity involving the formation or modification of channels (which commonly have been taken as evidence of fluvial processes), has important implications regarding likely gully formation processes and necessary environmental conditio
Authors
Colin M. Dundas, Serina Diniega, Candice J. Hansen, Shane Byrne, Alfred S. McEwen

Seismic hazard of American Samoa and neighboring South Pacific Islands--methods, data, parameters, and results

American Samoa and the neighboring islands of the South Pacific lie near active tectonic-plate boundaries that host many large earthquakes which can result in strong earthquake shaking and tsunamis. To mitigate earthquake risks from future ground shaking, the Federal Emergency Management Agency requested that the U.S. Geological Survey prepare seismic hazard maps that can be applied in building-de
Authors
Mark D. Petersen, Stephen C. Harmsen, Kenneth S. Rukstales, Charles S. Mueller, Daniel E. McNamara, Nicolas Luco, Melanie Walling
Was this page helpful?