Publications
Educational Publications
Educational Publications
Selected publications about earthquakes In plain language.
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Fault growth and acoustic emissions in confined granite
The failure process in a brittle granite was studied by using acoustic emission techniques to obtain three dimensional locations of the microfracturing events. During a creep experiment the nucleation of faulting coincided with the onset of tertiary creep, but the development of the fault could not be followed because the failure occurred catastrophically. A technique has been developed that enabl
Authors
David A. Lockner, James D. Byerlee
The Loma Prieta, California, Earthquake of October 17, 1989: Strong ground motion and ground failure
Professional Paper 1551 describes the effects at the land surface caused by the Loma Prieta earthquake. These effects: include the pattern and characteristics of strong ground shaking, liquefaction of both floodplain deposits along the Pajaro and Salinas Rivers in the Monterey Bay region and sandy artificial fills along the margins of San Francisco Bay, landslides in the epicentral region, and inc
Authors
Thomas L. Coordinated by Holzer
An evaluation of installation methods for STS-1 seismometers
This report documents the results of a series of experiments conducted by the authors at the Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory (ASl) during the spring and summer of 1991; the object of these experiments was to obtain and document quantitative performance comparisons of three methods of installing STS-1 seismometers. Historically, ASL has installed STS-1 sensors by cementing their thick glass ba
Authors
L. Gary Holcomb, Charles R. Hutt
Hayward fault: Large earthquakes versus surface creep
The Hayward fault, thought a likely source of large earthquakes in the next few decades, has generated two large historic earthquakes (about magnitude 7), one in 1836 and another in 1868. We know little about the 1836 event, but the 1868 event had a surface rupture extending 41 km along the southern Hayward fault. Right-lateral surface slip occurred in 1868, but was not well measured. Witness acco
Authors
James J. Lienkaemper, Glenn Borchardt
The Loma Prieta, California, earthquake of October, 17, 1989: Marina District
During the earthquake, a total land area of about 4,300 km2 was shaken with seismic intensities that can cause significant damage to structures. The area of the Marina District of San Francisco is only 4.0 km2--less than 0.1 percent of the area most strongly affected by the earthquake--but its significance with respect to engineering, seismology, and planning far outstrips its proportion of shaken
Authors
Thomas D. O'Rourke, M. G. Bonilla, John Boatwright, Linda C. Seekins, Thomas E. Fumal, Hsi-Ping Liu, Charles S. Mueller, Richard E. Warrick, Robert E. Westerlund, Eugene D. Sembera, Leif Wennerberg, Harry E. Stewart, Ashraf K. Hussein, J. -P. Bardet, M. Kapuskar, G. R. Martin, J. Proubet, H. T. Taylor, J.T. Cameron, S. Vahdani, H. Yap, Jonathan W. Pease, Stephen K. Harris, John A. Egan, Charles R. Scawthorn, Keith A. Porter, Frank T. Blackburn
Data report for the TACT 1987 seismic refraction survey: Fairbanks North and Olnes deployments
No abstract available.
Authors
Mark R. Goldman, G. S. Fuis, J. H. Luetgert, D.J. Geddes
Speculations on continental crustal evolution
The evolution of the continental crust is a topic that has challenged Earth scientists since the earliest hypotheses of crustal evolution were put forth by such luminaries as Hutton, the 18th century Scottish scientist, and later by Stille (Germany), Argand (France), and Dana (United States). Recent geophysical observations provide important constraints on hypotheses of crustal evolution, and the
Authors
R. Meissner, Walter D. Mooney
The velocity field along the San Andreas Fault in central and southern California
The velocity field within a 100‐km‐broad zone centered on the San Andreas fault between the Mexican border and San Francisco Bay has been inferred from repeated surveys of trilateration networks in the 1973–1989 interval. The velocity field has the appearance of a shear flow that remains parallel to the local strike of the fault even through such major deflections as the big bend of the San Andrea
Authors
Michael Lisowski, James C. Savage, W. H. Prescott
Strain accumulation in western Washington
The Juan de Fuca plate is subducted beneath the North American plate off the coast of Washington at a rate of about 40 mm/yr N68°E. The average principal strain rates (extension reckoned positive) measured in northwestern Washington are as follows: Olympic peninsula 25 km south of Port Angeles from 1982 through 1990, and and near Seattle from 1972 through 1985, and . Both strain measurements ar
Authors
James C. Savage, Michael Lisowski, W. H. Prescott
Tide gage measurements of uplift along the south coast of Alaska
Annual mean sea levels along the south coast of Alaska are used to measure uplift along the Alaska‐Aleutian subduction zone. Oceanographic effects are removed from the observed annual mean sea levels by subtracting a correction that is proportional to the sea level fluctuations observed in southeast Alaska. That correction is effective in reducing fluctuations in the observed, annual mean sea leve
Authors
James C. Savage, George Plafker
Criticism of some forecasts of the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council
The Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities has assigned probabilities for rupture in the interval from 1988 to 2018 to various segments of the San Andreas fault on the basis of the lognormal distribution of recurrence times of characteristic earthquakes postulated by Nishenko and Buland (1987). I question the validity of those probabilities on the basis of three separate arguments: (
Authors
James C. Savage
Continental crustal evolution observations
How has the continental crust evolved? What are the primary processes responsible for its composition, structure, and mode of deformation? What role do fluids play in deep crustal processes? In the last dozen years, geophysicists have obtained images of the deep continental crust that can be used to examine these questions and refine geologic models of crustal evolution. In this report we summariz
Authors
Walter D. Mooney, R. Meissner