Earthquake Science Center
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The Earthquake Science Center in Menlo Park, California, has been the flagship research center for the USGS in the western United States for more than 50 years. It is the largest USGS research center in the West and houses extensive research laboratories, scientific infrastructure, and library facilities.
Earthquake Science Center Seminars
Seminars typically take place at 10:30 AM Wednesdays in the Rambo Auditorium (main USGS Conference Room). The USGS Campus is located at 345 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, CA.
Browse SeminarsEarthquake Science Center Campus Video
This short, 7-minute video gives an overview of the USGS Earthquake Science Center in Menlo Park, California. It briefly introduces you to the San Francisco Bay Area, shows the campus and facilities, and includes interviews with scientists.
View videoHandbooks to Help You Prepare for an Earthquake
USGS handbooks that describe the threat posed by earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay region and explain how you can prepare for, survive, and recover from these inevitable events.
View HandbooksNews
USGS provides update for the National Seismic Hazard Model
USGS experts recently released a study that incorporates the latest earthquake science findings into an update of the National Seismic Hazard Model for the “lower-48” United States. Read the full report here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/8755293019878199
All Systems Go for First Statewide Testing of ShakeAlert in the United States
Today, the U.S. Geological Survey and the State of California pressed the “go” button to allow the first-ever statewide public testing of the California Early Earthquake Warning System, which is powered by USGS’s earthquake early warning alerts, called ShakeAlerts.
What if the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System Had Been Operating During the M6.9 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake?
How will ShakeAlert® likely perform now on a large earthquake impacting a major urban area? How much warning will you get? To answer this, let’s do a thought experiment...
Read the new Science for Everyone article at What if the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System...
Publications
Final report to SCEC on the January 8, 2020 SCEC workshop 'Dynamic Rupture TAG Ingredients Workshop – Fault Friction (SCEC Project 19121)'
This workshop was the second of a series of four SCEC5 workshops designed to evaluate the importance of each of the four ingredients required for dynamic earthquake rupture simulations. The four ingredients are: initial stress conditions, fault geometry, rock properties, and fault friction (Figure 1). This workshop included a range of views of...
Harris, Ruth A.; Barall, Michael
Potential duration of aftershocks of the 2020 southwestern Puerto Rico earthquake
AbstractAftershocks (earthquakes clustered spatially and chronologically near the occurrence of a causative earthquake) are ongoing in southwestern Puerto Rico after a series of earthquakes, which include a magnitude 6.4 earthquake that occurred near Barrio Indios, Guayanilla, on January 7, 2020, and affected the surrounding area. This report...
Van Der Elst, Nicholas; Hardebeck, Jeanne L.; Michael, Andrew J. Caltech/USGS Southern California Seismic Network (SCSN) and Southern California Earthquake Data Center (SCEDC): Data availability for the 2019 Ridgecrest sequence
The 2019 M6.4 and M7.1 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence occurred in the eastern California shear zone (ECSZ). The mainshock ruptured the Little Lake fault zone and aftershocks extended from the Garlock fault in the south, to the southern end of the 1872 M7.5 Owens Valley earthquake rupture in the north. We present data from the Southern California...
Hauksson, Egill; Yoon, Clara; Yu, Ellen; Andrews, Jennifer; Alvarez, Mark; Bhadha, Rayo; Thomas, Valerie