Publications

To augment limited instrumental recordings of the Mw 7.8 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake on 25 April 2015 (Nepali calendar: 12 Baisakh 2072, Bikram Samvat), we collected 3831 detailed media and first-person accounts of macroseismic effects that include sufficiently detailed information to assign intensities. The resulting intensity map reveals the distribution of shaking within and outside of...

Studies of active fault zones have flourished with the availability of high-resolution topographic data, particularly where airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) and structure from motion (SfM) data sets provide a means to remotely analyze submeter-scale fault geomorphology. To determine surface offset at a point along a strike-slip earthquake rupture, geomorphic features (e.g...

We present a new method to locate low-frequency earthquakes (LFEs) within tectonic tremor episodes based on time-reverse imaging techniques. The modified time-reverse imaging technique presented here is the first method that locates individual LFEs within tremor episodes within 5 km uncertainty without relying on high-amplitude P-wave arrivals and that produces similar hypocentral...

We have identified block structure in the Pacific Northwest (west of 116°W between 38°N and 49°N) by clustering GPS stations so that the same Euler vector approximates the velocity of each station in a cluster. Given the total number k of clusters desired, the clustering procedure finds the best assignment of stations to clusters. Clustering is calculated for k= 2 to 14. In geographic...

The 24 August 2014 Mw6.0 South Napa, California earthquake produced significant offsets on 12 borehole strainmeters in the San Francisco Bay area. These strainmeters are located between 24 and 80 km from the source and the observed offsets ranged up to 400 parts-per-billion (ppb), which exceeds their nominal precision by a factor of 100. However, the observed offsets of tidally...

The subduction zone in northern Chile is a well-identified seismic gap that last ruptured in 1877. On 1 April 2014, this region was struck by a large earthquake following a two week long series of foreshocks. This study combines a wide range of observations, including geodetic, tsunami, and seismic data, to produce a reliable kinematic slip model of the Mw=8.1 main shock and a static...

The Robert A. Millikan Library is a reinforced concrete building with a basement level and nine stories above the ground. Located on the campus of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena California, it is among the most densely instrumented buildings in the U.S. From the early dates of its construction, it has been the subject of many investigations, especially regarding...

The M5.8 23 August 2011 Mineral, Virginia, earthquake was felt over nearly the entire eastern United States and was recorded by a wide array of seismic broadband instruments. The earthquake occurred ~200 km southeast of the boundary between two distinct geologic belts, the Piedmont and Blue Ridge terranes to the southeast and the Valley and Ridge Province to the northwest. At a dominant...

Groundwater levels were offset in bedrock observation wells, measured by the U.S. Geological Survey or others, as far as 553 km from the Mw 5.8 Mineral, Virginia (USA), earthquake on 23 August 2011. Water levels dropped as much as 0.47 m in 34 wells and rose as much as 0.15 m in 12 others. In some wells, which are as much as 213 m deep, the water levels recovered from these deviations in...

Subduction zone megathrust faults produce most of the world’s largest earthquakes. Although the physical properties of these faults are difficult to observe directly, their frictional strength can be estimated indirectly by constraining the orientations of the stresses that act on them. A global investigation of stress orientations in subduction zones finds that the maximum compressive...

Detailed geodetic imaging of earthquake rupture enhances our understanding of earthquake physics and induced ground shaking. The April 25, 2015 Mw 7.8 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake is the first example of a large continental megathrust rupture beneath a high-rate (5 Hz) GPS network. We use GPS and InSAR data to model the earthquake rupture as a slip pulse of ~20 km width, ~6 s duration, and...

Mount St. Helens began erupting in late 2004 following an 18 year quiescence. Swarms of repeating earthquakes accompanied the extrusion of a mostly solid dacite dome over the next 4 years. In some cases the waveforms from these earthquakes evolved slowly, likely reflecting changes in the properties of the volcano that affect seismic wave propagation. We use coda-wave interferometry to...