Publications
Educational Publications
Educational Publications
Selected publications about earthquakes In plain language.
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Chapter C. The Loma Prieta, California, Earthquake of October 17, 1989 - Fire, police, transportation and hazardous materials
The papers in this chapter discuss some of the failures and successes that resulted from the societal response by a multitude of agencies to the Loma Prieta earthquake. Some of the lessons learned were old ones relearned. Other lessons were obvious ones which had gone unnoticed. Still, knowledge gained from past earthquakes spawned planning and mitigation efforts which proved to be successful in l
Authors
Charles R. Scawthorn
Chapter A. The Loma Prieta, California, Earthquake of October 17, 1989 - Loss estimation and procedures
This Professional Paper includes a collection of papers on subjects ranging from evaluation of building safety, to human injuries, to correlation of ground deformation with building damage. What these papers share is a common goal to improve the tools available to the research community to measure the nature, extent, and causes of damage and losses due to earthquakes. These measurement tools are c
The Loma Prieta, California, Earthquake of October 17, 1989 — Hydrologic disturbances
Seismic events have long been known to cause changes in the level of oceans, streams, lakes, and the water table. The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 induced significant hydrologic changes that were qualitatively similar to those changes observed for the Loma Prieta earthquake. What is different is that the hydrologic data sets collected from the Loma Prieta event have enough detail to enab
Probability of one or more M ≥7 earthquakes in southern California in 30 years
Eight earthquakes of magnitude greater than or equal to seven have occurred in southern California in the past 200 years. If one assumes that such events are the product of a Poisson process, the probability of one or more earthquakes of magnitude seven or larger in southern California within any 30 year interval is 67% ± 23% (95% confidence interval). Because five of the eight M ≥ 7 earthquakes i
Authors
James C. Savage
The Loma Prieta, California, Earthquake of October 17, 1989: Strong ground motion
Strong ground motion generated by the Loma Prieta, Calif., earthquake (MS~7.1) of October 17, 1989, resulted in at least 63 deaths, more than 3,757 injuries, and damage estimated to exceed $5.9 billion. Strong ground motion severely damaged critical lifelines (freeway overpasses, bridges, and pipelines), caused severe damage to poorly constructed buildings, and induced a significant number of grou
Authors
Roger D. Borcherdt, A. Gerald Brady, A.F. Shakal, V.F. Cormier, Wei-Jou Su, Jeffry L. Stevens, Steven M. Day, John E. Vidale, Ornella Bonamassa, Paul G. Somerville, Nancy F. Smith, Robert Graves, Gary Glassmoyer, Kyle Rollins, Michael D. Mchood, Roman D. Hryciw, Matthew Homolka, Scott E. Shewbridge, Harvey Carlisle, Nicholas Sitar, Rodrigo Salgado, Pedro de Alba, J. Benoit, Daniel G. Pass, John Carter, T. Leslie Youd, E. H. Field, Susan E. Hough, K.H. Jacob, Paul A. Friberg, Arthur Frankel, R. Busby, Robert A. Williams, Edward Cranswick, Kenneth W. King, Grant T. Lindley, Ralph J. Archuleta, Janice M. Murphy, Steven G. Wesnousky
The Loma Prieta, California, earthquake of October 17, 1989: Tectonic processes and models
If there is a single theme that unifies the diverse papers in this chapter, it is the attempt to understand the role of the Loma Prieta earthquake in the context of the earthquake 'machine' in northern California: as the latest event in a long history of shocks in the San Francisco Bay region, as an incremental contributor to the regional deformation pattern, and as a possible harbinger of future
Authors
Robert W. Simpson, John H. Shaw, Richard E. Bischke, J. Suppe, Gianluca Valensise, Susan Y. Schwartz, Daniel L. Orange, Robert S. Anderson, Paul A. Reasenberg, Paul Bodin, Roger G. Bilham, Kevin P. Furlong, David Verdonck
Seismic structure of the uppermost mantle beneath the Kenya rift
A major goal of the Kenya Rift International Seismic Project (KRISP) 1990 experiment was the determination of deep lithospheric structure. In the refraction/wide-angle reflection part of the KRISP effort, the experiment was designed to obtain arrivals to distances in excess of 400 km. Phases from interfaces within the mantle were recorded from many shotpoints, and by design, the best data were obt
Authors
Gordon R. Keller, J. Mechie, L.W. Braile, Walter D. Mooney, C. Prodehl
The KRISP 90 seismic experiment-a technical review
On the basis of a preliminary experiment in 1985 (KRISP 85), a seismic refraction/wide-angle reflection survey and a teleseismic tomography experiment were jointly undertaken to study the lithospheric structure of the Kenya rift down to depths of greater than 200 km. This report serves as an introduction to a series of subsequent papers and will focus on the technical description of the seismic su
Authors
C. Prodehl, J. Mechie, U. Achauer, Gordon R. Keller, M.A. Khan, Walter D. Mooney, S.J. Gaciri, J.D. Obel
Crustal structure beneath the Kenya Rift from axial profile data
Modelling of the KRISP 90 axial line data shows that major crustal thinning occurs along the axis of the Kenya Rift from Moho depths of 35 km in the south beneath the Kenya Dome in the vicinity of Lake Naivasha to 20 km in the north beneath Lake Turkana. Low Pn velocities of 7.5–7.7 km/s are found beneath the whole of the axial line. The results indicate that crustal extension increases to the nor
Authors
J. Mechie, Gordon R. Keller, C. Prodehl, S. Gaciri, L.W. Braile, Walter D. Mooney, D. Gajewski, K.-J. Sandmeier
Crustal architecture of the Cascadia Forearc
Seismic profiling data indicate that the thickness of an accreted oceanic terrane of Paleocene and early Eocene age, which forms the basement of much of the forearc beneath western Oregon and Washington, varies by approximately a factor of 4 along the strike of the Cascadia subduction zone. Beneath the Oregon Coast Range, the accreted terrane is 25 to 35 kilometers thick, whereas offshore Vancouve
Authors
A.M. Trehu, I. Asudeh, Thomas M. Brocher, James H. Luetgert, Walter D. Mooney, J.L. Nabelek, Y. Nakamura
Composition of the crust beneath the Kenya rift
We infer the composition of the crust beneath and on the flanks of the Kenya rift based on a comparison of the KRISP-90 crustal velocity structure with laboratory measurements of compressional-wave velocities of rock samples from Kenya. The rock samples studied, which are representative of the major lithologies exposed in Kenya, include volcanic tuffs and flows (primarily basalts and phonolites),
Authors
Walter D. Mooney, N.I. Christensen
The East African rift system in the light of KRISP 90
On the basis of a test experiment in 1985 (KRISP 85) an integrated seismic-refraction/teleseismic survey (KRISP 90) was undertaken to study the deep structure beneath the Kenya rift down to depths of 100–150 km. This paper summarizes the highlights of KRISP 90 as reported in this volume and discusses their broad implications as well as the structure of the Kenya rift in the general framework of ot
Authors
Gordon R. Keller, C. Prodehl, J. Mechie, K. Fuchs, M.A. Khan, Peter K.H. Maguire, Walter D. Mooney, U. Achauer, P.M. Davis, R.P. Meyer, L.W. Braile, I.O. Nyambok, G. A. Thompson