Publications

This paper explores the post-earthquake building assessment program that was utilized in Christchurch, New Zealand following the Canterbury Sequence of earthquakes beginning with the Magnitude (Mw.) 7.1 Darfield event in September 2010. The aftershocks or triggered events, two of which exceeded Mw 6.0, continued with events in February and June 2011 causing the greatest amount of damage. More than

No abstract available

Hill (2008) and Hill (2010) contain two technical errors: (1) a missing factor of 2 for computed Love‐wave amplitudes, and (2) a sign error in the off‐diagonal elements in the Euler rotation matrix.

The 21st century has already seen its share of devastating earthquakes, some of which have been labeled as “unexpected,” at least in the eyes of some seismologists and more than a few journalists. A list of seismological surprises could include the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Islands; 2008 Wenchuan, China; 2009 Haiti; 2011 Christchurch, New Zealand; and 2011 Tohoku, Japan, earthquakes

Recently, a simple method was proposed for the determination of pitch angle between two coil axes by means of a total field magnetometer. The method is applicable when the homogeneous volume in the centre of the coil system is large enough to accommodate the total field sensor. Orthogonality of calibration coil systems used for calibrating vector magnetometers can be attained by this procedure.

The Keanakākoʻi Tephra at Kīlauea Volcano has previously been interpreted by some as the product of a caldera-forming eruption in 1790 CE. Our study, however, finds stratigraphic and 14C evidence that the tephra instead results from numerous eruptions throughout a 300-year period between about 1500 and 1800. The stratigraphic evidence includes: (1) as many as six pure lithic ash beds interleaved i

The USGS Multihazards Project is working with numerous agencies to evaluate and plan for hazards and damages that could be caused by extreme winter storms impacting California. Atmospheric and hydrological aspects of a hypothetical storm scenario have been quantified as a basis for estimation of human, infrastructure, economic, and environmental impacts for emergency-preparedness and flood-plannin

Landslides are ubiquitous along the Oregon coast. Many are large, deep slides in sedimentary rock and are dormant or active only during the rainy season. Morphology, observed movement rates, and total movement suggest that many are at least several hundreds of years old. The offshore Cascadia subduction zone produces great earthquakes every 300–500 years that generate tsunami that inundate the coa

We sampled fumaroles and hot springs from the Heart Lake Geyser Basin (HLGB), measured water and gas discharge, and estimated heat and mass flux from this geothermal area in 2009. The combined data set reveals that diverse fluids share an origin by mixing of deep solute-rich parent water with dilute heated meteoric water, accompanied by subsequent boiling. A variety of chemical and isotopic geothe

Effusion rate is a primary measurement used to judge the expected advance rate, length, and hazard potential of lava flows. At basaltic volcanoes, the rapid draining of lava stored in rootless shields and perched ponds can produce lava flows with much higher local effusion rates and advance velocities than would be expected based on the effusion rate at the vent. For several months in 2007–2008, l

A fundamental riddle of earthquake occurrence is that tectonic motions at plate interiors are steady, changing only subtly over millions of years, but at plate boundary faults, the plates are stuck for hundreds of years and then suddenly jerk forward in earthquakes. Why does this happen? The answer, as formulated by Harry F. Reid (Reid 1910, 192) is that the Earth’s crust is elastic, behaving like

Every year, and in many countries worldwide, wildfires cause significant damage and economic losses due to both the direct effects of the fires and the subsequent accelerated runoff, erosion, and debris flow. Wildfires can have profound effects on the hydrologic response of watersheds by changing the infiltration characteristics and erodibility of the soil, which leads to decreased rainfall infilt