Earthquake Hazards Program
Publications
Educational Publications
Selected publications about earthquakes In plain language.
Browse Publications
Earthquake early warning in Aotearoa New Zealand: A survey of public perspectives to guide warning system development
Earthquake early warning (EEW) can be used to detect earthquakes and provide advanced notification of strong shaking, allowing pre-emptive actions to be taken that not only benefit infrastructure but reduce injuries and fatalities. Currently Aotearoa New Zealand does not have a nationwide EEW system, so a survey of the public was undertaken to...
Becker, Julia S.; Potter, Sally H.; Vinnel, Lauren; Nakayachi, Kazuya; McBride, Sara; Johnston, David A. Evaluation of seismic hazard models with fragile geologic features
We provide an overview of a 2019 workshop on the use of fragile geologic features (FGFs) to evaluate seismic hazard models. FGFs have been scarcely utilized in the evaluation of seismic hazard models, despite nearly 30 yr having passed since the first recognition of their potential value. Recently, several studies have begun to focus on the...
Stirling, Mark W.; Oskin, Mike; Arrowsmith, J. Ramon; Rood, Anna H.; Goulet, Christine A.; Grant Ludwig, Lisa; King, Tamarah; Kottke, Albert; Lozos, Julian C.; Madugo, Chris L M; McPhillips, Devin; Rood, Dylan; Sleep, Norman; Wittich, Christine Injection‐induced earthquakes near Milan, Kansas, controlled by Karstic Networks
Induced earthquakes from waste disposal operations in otherwise tectonically stable regions significantly increases seismic hazard. It remains unclear why injections induce large earthquakes on non‐optimally oriented faults kilometers below the injection horizon, particularly since fluids are not injected under pressure, but rather poured, into...
Joubert, Charlene; Sohrabi, Reza; Rubinstein, Justin; Jansen, Gunnar; Miller, Stephen A Localized fault-zone dilatancy and surface inelasticity of the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes
Earthquakes produce a spectrum of elastic and inelastic deformation processes that are reflected across various length and time scales. While elasticity has long dominated research assumptions in active tectonics, increasing interest has focused on the inelastic characteristics of earthquakes, particularly those of the surface fault rupture zone...
Barnhart, William D.; Gold, Ryan D.; Hollingsworth, James Identifying the greatest earthquakes of the past 2000 years at the Nehalem River Estuary, Northern Oregon Coast, USA
We infer a history of three great megathrust earthquakes during the past 2000 years at the Nehalem River estuary based on the lateral extent of sharp (≤3 mm) peat-mud stratigraphic contacts in cores and outcrops, coseismic subsidence as interpreted from fossil diatom assemblages and reconstructed with foraminiferal assemblages using a Bayesian...
Nelson, Alan R.; Hawkes, Andrea D.; Sawai, Yuki; Engelhart, Simon E.; Witter, Robert C.; Grant-Walter, Wendy C.; Bradley, Lee-Ann; Dura, Tina; Cahill, Niamh; Horton, Benajamin P. VS30 and Dominant Site Frequency (fd) as Provisional Station ML Corrections (dML) in California
New seismic stations added to a regional seismic network cannot be used to calculate local magnitude (ML">MLML) until a revised regionwide amplitude decay function is developed. Each station must record a minimum number of local and regional earthquakes that meet specific amplitude requirements prior to recalibration of the amplitude decay...
Yong, Alan; Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Andrews, Jennifer; Hudson, Kenneth; Antony Martin; Yu, Ellen; Herrick, Julie A; Dozal, Jessica Rainfall triggers more deep-seated landslides than Cascadia earthquakes in the Oregon Coast Range, USA
The coastal Pacific Northwest USA hosts thousands of deep-seated landslides. Historic landslides have primarily been triggered by rainfall, but the region is also prone to large earthquakes on the 1100-km-long Cascadia Subduction Zone megathrust. Little is known about the number of landslides triggered by these earthquakes because the last...
LaHusen, Sean R; Duvall, Alison R; Booth, Adam M; Grant, Alex R. R. ; Mishkin, Benjamin A; Montgomery, David R; Struble, William; Roering, Joshua J.; Wartman, Joseph
Earthquake information products and tools from the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS)
This Fact Sheet describes post-earthquake products and tools provided by the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) through the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program. The focus is on products that provide situational awareness immediately after significant earthquakes.
Wald, Lisa A. Forecasting for a fractured land: A case study of the communication and use of aftershock forecasts from the Mw 7.8 2016 Kaikōura earthquake in Aotearoa New Zealand
Operational earthquake forecasts (OEFs) are represented as time‐dependent probabilities of future earthquake hazard and risk. These probabilities can be presented in a variety of formats, including tables, maps, and text‐based scenarios. In countries such as Aotearoa New Zealand, the U.S., and Japan, OEFs have been released by scientific...
Becker, Julia S.; Potter, Sally H.; McBride, Sara; Hudson-Doyle, Emma E.; Gerstenberger, Matthew; Christopherson, Anne-Marie Developing post-alert messaging for ShakeAlert, the earthquake early warning system for the West Coast of the United States of America
As ShakeAlert, the earthquake early warning system for the West Coast of the U.S., begins its transition to operational public alerting, we explore how post-alert messaging might represent system performance. Planned post-alert messaging can provide timely, crucial information to both emergency managers and ShakeAlert operators as well as...
McBride, Sara; Bostrom, Ann; Sutton, Jeannette; deGroot, Robert Michael; Baltay, Annemarie S.; Terbush, Brian; Bodin, Paul; Dixon, Maximilian; Holland, Emily; Arba, Ryan; Laustsen, Paul C.; Liu, Sophia; Vinci, Margaret A stress-similarity triggering model for aftershocks of the MW6.4 and MW7.1 Ridgecrest earthquakes
The July 2019 Mw">Mw 6.4 and 7.1 Ridgecrest earthquakes triggered numerous aftershocks, including clusters of off‐fault aftershocks in an extensional stepover of the Garlock fault, near the town of Olancha, and near Panamint Valley. The locations of the off‐fault aftershocks are consistent with the stress‐similarity model of triggering,...
Hardebeck, Jeanne L. Are the stress drops of small earthquakes good predictors of the stress drops of moderate-to-large earthquakes?
The stress drops of small earthquakes often exhibit spatial patterns of variability. If moderate and large earthquakes follow the same spatial patterns, the stress drops of possible future damaging earthquakes could be better predicted by considering the stress drops of nearby small events. Better stress drop predictability could reduce ground-...
Hardebeck, Jeanne L.